said they came from the World’s End, but, as is known, the world ends at the farther islands, and beyond them is nothing. It was alleged they came from the Plains of Turia, far south of Bazi and Schendi, or from the Barrens to the east, but, if such things are so, why was there no heralding of their approach, no records of their passage?
In any event many are in Brundisium.
They speak a comprehensible dialect of Gorean, one with which I am not familiar. They work largely through agents. They have gold, apparently much gold. Some serious project is afoot. Their agents are hiring ships, and recruiting men, many ships, many men. Some ships, with crews, and complements of armed men, have already left port, bound north. They are laying in extensive supplies. Guarded compounds near the wharves are stacked with boxes, barrels, bales, clay vessels, like blunt-bottomed amphorae, tied together by the handles, bulging sacks, and weighty crates. It is as though some great voyage was contemplated, but the ships are small coasters, many of which one might not even risk to Temos or Jad, and they seem to move north. What might be in the northern forests, or Torvaldsland, to warrant this mighty movement of men and supplies? Do they think to found a city at the mouth of some far river, say, the Laurius or the remote Alexandra? Such locations would seem remote and inauspicious. Too, interestingly, many of the supplies seem to be war supplies, and naval stores. Why would one require naval stores to found a city, or even a village? Other goods, one supposes, would suggest trading, or the raid. There are bundles of silk, coils of wire, brass lamps, jars of ointment and salve, flat boxes of cosmetics; and poles on which are strung shackles and slave chain. Do they truly think there is that much slave fruit in the north? And, besides, they are already buying slaves. They are buying them from the shelves, from the wharf cages, the dock markets, and the house markets. Agents of Pani, for example, had purchased several of the girls in the recent sale I had witnessed, including the one whom I had found of some negligible interest, whom I had originally seen in a large emporium on another world. She would not remember me, though it was I who brought her to the collar and whip, where she, and such as she, belong. Some were even purchased at the gates, off their rope coffles, as bandits, or refugees, had brought them in. It was not fully clear why these purchases, or so many of them, had been made. If they were to be resold there seemed little point in taking them north. Better markets were elsewhere. Perhaps they were for gifts or trade goods. But to whom, and where? Certainly a lovely female makes a splendid gift, and, in many situations, can be bartered to one’s advantage. But who is, say, to buy them in the north, and so many? To be sure, many men were taking ship north, and they might be intended for them, if not for outright purchasing, for brothels, slave houses, or taverns. Men will want their slaves. Many of the purchased slaves were being held in the vicinity of the docks, in holding areas, the basements of warehouses, and such. In some places, through the high, narrow, barred windows in the walls, through which light may filter, they would hear the calls of longshoremen, their loading chants, the rumble of wheels on the planks, the creak of timbers, the stirring of slack canvas on a round ship, the water washing against the pilings.
I am familiar with such places as I have brought slaves to them. How they moan and cry out, and sob, when herded down the stairs to the straw, and rings! It is not pleasant to be confined in such a place, for they are often dark, cold, and damp, the straw soiled, the chains heavy. It was to such a place that a particular slave might have been brought.
I did not know.
How pleased they are then to be brought into the light, and the keeping of masters!
As I have mentioned, the agents of the Pani were recruiting. One might have supposed then, under the current circumstances in Brundisium, with the business to the southeast, the accompanying influx of refugees, and such, that the misery in Brundisium, the crowding and hunger, would have been muchly relieved, as men