than docile, servile, collared beasts? Did it have to do with the fact that men found us of interest, and would buy us, and own us? Was it our beauty, if beauty it was, which so infuriated her? Why should she be concerned with us? Did she not know we were slaves, simple beasts, and could be sold? I dreaded the morning, when I would be again at her mercy. Why did she use the switch so upon us? What if we might be attractive to men? What did it matter? We were no more than simple beasts, animals, at her mercy. Our bodies were rich with the stripes of her displeasure. Did she not know we were desperate to please her? She was so different from a man. We would hardly ever be struck by a man, unless we were somehow displeasing. To be sure, we might sometimes be lashed, if only to remind us that we were slaves. The lash well confirms our bondage upon us.
I had had the sense, from the evening, though to be sure I was facing away, my head to the left, my right cheek on the dirt, that Tuza may not have drunk as deeply as the others. I had conjectured this from various remarks, from chidings, from jokes, from laughter, protests, and such. She had seemed to be pouring wine, and pressing it on others. I was not sure she was as eager to drain her own goblet, certainly not again, and again. I had wondered about this, and even wondered if it was the case, but I had then fallen asleep. Such things were not my concern. They were the business of the mistresses. Curiosity, as I recalled, was not becoming in a kajira.
But where was Tuza? She was not in her blankets.
Perhaps, I thought, she has fled, has perhaps robbed and deserted the band. But would she not have taken one of us with her, gagged, to carry her loot? The packs seemed much to me as they had been earlier.
I then saw Tuza emerge, like a shadow, from the forest. In her hands she carried some object.
I could not have called out even had I wished to do so. It was not that I was simply afraid to speak, though I was, or because I had been silenced by the will of the mistress. It was different. I watched in horror. I could not make a sound. I was too frightened. I tried to call out. But no sound came from my throat.
Too, it was finished in an instant. Nothing would have been different, even had I managed to cry out.
Tuza had slipped to her knees beside Darla, lifted her hands over her head, grasping the dark object, which was a heavy stone, and struck downward. Darla made a small noise, and then, apparently, lapsed into unconsciousness. Tuza put the stone to one side, and drew out her knife. I realized clearly that Tuza, had she wished, might have broken open the skull of her victim, killing her instantly, but had controlled the blow, for, it seemed, she had other plans for the leader of the band of Darla.
I saw Tuza look toward me, but she did no more than smile. With her knife she cut the skins from Darla, and removed her weapons, and ornaments, one by one, with several of which she decorated her own body. She then jerked the bloody talmit from Darla’s head. She then fetched some articles from one of the packs. I heard a rustle of chain. She then knelt beside the unconscious Darla, and moving her inert body about, encircled it with a waist chain, which she drew back, snugly, about Darla’s belly. The chain, as is common with such chains, contained its associated slave bracelets, by means of which a slave’s hands may be cuffed before her body, or behind it, in both cases being held close to her body. A slave’s hands are helpless in such a constraint. For example, if she is front-cuffed, she may not even lift her hands to feed herself. But the unconscious Darla’s hands were pulled back, and cuffed closely together, at the small of her back. Tuza then snapped a pair of ankle shackles on the unconscious Darla. They would permit her ankles a play of less than a foot.
Tuza then, apparently muchly satisfied with herself, stood up, stirred the fire, and threw upon it much of the fuel we had gathered earlier in