Free Captive of Gor by John Norman Page B

We hated her.
    Also, we envied her. Not only was she the most beautiful but she had been
    trained in the house of Cernus, the great slave house, in Ar, before its fall.
    Even more important she had once been sold, even from the great block of the
    Curulean. Lana was always placed at the end of the display chain, that the most
    attractive merchandise be glimpsed last. We were hoping she that she would be
    sold, but Targo was holding out for an extremely high price for her. Doubtless
    he would have received many times, except that she had not been of high caste.
    She treated the rest of us as slaves. Targo, and some of the guards, sometimes,
    would give her candies, and sweetmeats. My own position in the display chain, at
    the beginning, was fourth. I was taught to kneel in a certain way, and, when
    inspected, to lift my head, smile, and utter a certain phrase. Targo, and the
    guards, made me practice it many times. I later learned that its meaning was
    “Buy me, Maser.” In displaying a girl, an ankle ring is placed on her (pg. 62)
    left ankle. This locks on the ankle. There is also a smaller ring, projecting
    from the larger ring, which also locks. This smaller ring can either be snapped
    into a particular link in a chain, thus allowing the girls to be spaced at
    certain intervals, or it can be closed about the chain as a whole, thus
    permitting the chain to run freely through the ring without injuring or burning
    the girl’s ankle. In the “display chain,” we were spaced on the chain, and the
    chain stretched rather taut and fastened at both ends, sometimes to trees,
    sometimes to two large metal screws, more than two feet in length, which screwed
    into the ground, beyond the reach on each end of the first and last girl. Thus,
    not only would we be secured, but we were unable to crowd together, as girls,
    particularly unexperienced girls, have a tendency to do when not prevented. In
    the display chain, it might be mentioned, as would be expected, we are
    exhibited, unclothed. A Gorean saying has it that only a fool would buy a woman
    clothed. I suppose it was true.
    Targo had set forth from Ko-ro-ba with forty girls and five wagons, ten bosk,
    and many other goods. His men, at that time, had numbered more than twenty. Two
    days out of Ko-ro-ba, crossing the fields northward toward Laura, the sky had
    darkened with a flight of outlaw tarnsmen, more than a hundred of them, under
    the command of the terrible Rask of Treve, one of the most dreaded warriors on
    all Gor. Fortunately for Targo he had managed to bring his caravan to the edge
    of a vast Ka-la-na thicket just before the tarnsmen struck. I had seen several
    such thickets when I was wandering alone in the fields. Targo had divided his
    men expertly. Some he set to seize up what gold and goods they could. Others he
    ordered to free the girls and drive them into the thicket. Others he commanded
    to cut loose the great bosk that pulled the wagons, and drive them, too, into
    the brush and trees. Then, but moments before the tarnsmen struck, Targo, with
    his men driving the girls and the bosk, fled into the thicket. The tarnsmen
    alighted and ransacked the wagons, setting fire to them. There was sharp
    fighting in the thicket. Targo must have lost some eleven men, and some twenty
    of his girls were taken by the tarnsmen, but, after a (pg. 63) bit, the tarnsmen
    withdrew. Tarnsmen, riders of the great tarns, called Brothers of the Wind, are
    masters of the open sky, fierce warriors whose battleground is the clouds and
    sky; they are not forest people; they do not care to stalk and hunt where, from
    the darkness of trees, from a canopy of foliage, they may meet suddenly,
    unexpectedly, a quarrel from the crossbow of an invisible assailant.
    Rask withdrew his men and, in moments, the captured girls bound across their
    saddles, the goods of Targo thrust into their packs, they took flight.
    Targo gathered his men and goods. Nineteen of the girls, separately, taken deep
    into