Beasts of Gor by John Norman Page B

thing,” said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, “I am the most beautiful of us four.”
    “I am,” said the dark-haired girl, angrily, indignantly.
    “No,” said the blond. “I am surely the most beautiful!”
    “You do not even want a man to touch you,” said the dark-haired girl.
    “No,” said the blond. “But I am still the most beautiful.”
    The dark-haired girl looked out over the crowd. “They will decide who is most beautiful,” she said.
    “They?” asked the blond.
    “The masters,” said the dark-haired girl.
    “Masters?” stammered the blond.
    “Yes,” said the dark-haired girl, “the masters, those men out there, those who will buy us, our masters, they will decide who is most beautiful.”
    The girls knelt back in their chains. They knelt back easily, on their heels.
    “Oh!” cried the blond girL
    A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, “No.” Her eyes were frightened.
    The stout fellow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver’s men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.
    “These are new slaves?” asked the tarn keeper.
    “Fresh to the collar,” said the slaver’s man.
    “I need a wench,” said the man, “one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my hut by night, as a pot-and-mat girl.”
    “These four wenches,” said the slaver’s man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, “are comely candidates for such a post.” He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. “Consider this one,” he said, indicating the blond, who was first upon the chain.
    He reached to her tunic.
    “Don’t touch me,” she cried, drawing back.
    “A barbarian,” said the tam keeper.
    “Yes,” said the slaver’s man.
    “And the others?” asked the tarn keeper.
    “They are all barbarian, Master,” said the slaver’s man.
    The dark-haired girl, seeing the tam keeper’s eyes upon her, shrank back.
    The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver’s man joined his colleague at the platform. “We will never sell these,” said the first. “They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean.”
    “Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion,” said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.
    “It would be a waste of block time,” said the first. “Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?” he asked. “We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar.”
    “Who of Ar would want them?” asked the second man grinning.
    “We will have to take them back to Ar,” said the first man.
    “We could sell them for sleen feed here,” said the second.
    “That is true,” granted the first.
    “Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms,” said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. “I shall stay in this vicinity for the time.”
    The other man nodded, and turned away.
    The second slaver’s man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.
    “The bids have begun in the pavilion,” I heard.
    “Move forward,” said the slaver’s man to the girls, in Gorean. They did not understand his words, but his gesture was clear. Frightened, they, on their knees, crept forward to the edge of the