Free Tribesmen of Gor by John Norman Page B

I regarded her. "Then," I said, regarding her, "you will be too beautiful to free."
           "I must hurry home," she said, "to prepare supper for my father."
           I watched her run, shamed, through the streets. She was lovely. I had little doubt that, in time, she would wear slave bells. Even if she were not to be sold by the magistracy of Tor I thought it not unlikely that she would fall to the noose of a slaver.
          "Buy us! Buy us, Master!" cried the other girls on the shelf.
          "Be slaves," I laughed to them, turning away.
           They wept. I heard the lash fall among them.
          Here and there in the bazaar I made purchases.
           Twice I was passed by pairs of guardsmen, in white robes with red sashes and scimitars, the police of Tor.
            Not five paces behind them I saw a ragged cutpurse cut the wallet of a merchant, dropping its contents into his hand and, bowing and whining, twist away in the crowd. The merchant huffed away. The fellow had done it neatly. I recalled a girl named Tina, once of Lydius, now of Port Kar. She, too, had
    been an excellent thief. My own coins I kept in belt pockets, within my robes, save for a small wallet at my side. I went about Tor now as a traveler from Turia, a small merchant. I checked the wallet at my side. It was intact.
           Some other thieves had not done so well in the bazaar. Several right hands, severed, were nailed to a board on which salt prices were affixed.
          There were no feminine hands on the board. A female thief in Tor, even on the first offense, is immediately reduced to slavery.
           I glanced behind me. For the second time I saw four men, the same four. But they were only four.
           I stood aside as a chain of male slaves was herded by, with spear butts. They were bound for the brine pits of the Tahari, whence comes most of the caravan salt. I expected that less than half of them would reach the pits. Heavy collars, with rings, they wore about their necks. A heavy chain, running through the rings, linked them together by the throat. Their wrists, manacled, were behind their backs. They were naked. Men spit at them as they were herded past.
           Miss Blake-Allen was no longer in my compartment. She was now in the public pens of Tor. On the morning of the second day, in the process of my work for Priest-Kings, I had entered the shaded offices of the municipal slave master of
    Tor.
          "Stand here," I told Miss Blake-Allen, indicating a place in the center of the floor, before the desk of the slave master. She stood where I had indicated. "Remove your slippers," I told her. She slipped from the slippers, black with silver thread. She was now barefoot. The slave master came around to the front of his desk. He leaned back against it, sitting on its edge. "Remove the haik," I told the girl. She removed the garment. She stood between us, nude.
           The slave master regarded her. Then he walked about her, slowly. She stood straight, a female examined by a man. She did not look at him. The slave master looked at me. I nodded. Her body stiffened, and she shut her eyes, as his hands, those of a Gorean flesh appraiser, informed, sensitive, professional, proficient, made swift assessment of the textures of her skin, varying at different points on the body, the tensilities of her musculature, the varying softness and firmness of her, the sweet, complex delights of her lines, the obvious exciting contours of her, the more subtle contours, too, the curve at her hip, at her shoulder, her instep, the back of her neck; he, too, made test, to her helpless, recoiling horror, of the latent pleasures of her, swiftly revealing, then passing over, it noted, the promise of an incredible responsiveness; there were tears in her eyes; how precious and beautiful, I thought, is a woman, how unsurprising that a vital man, without compromise; simply wishes to own such a fantastic,