(Continued from Day 2: Wood/Confined)
The thud and scrape of wood on wood echoed through the ship’s hold as it came alongside the dock. Frightened moans and whimpers filled the cramped wooden pens which held the dozens of women and girls the pirates had captured in their raids. In the pen she had languished in for weeks now, Athal wondered if this was yet another one.
Three times before, the floating prison had come ashore: once against a wooden pier like this, twice on sandy bays like the one that lay below where her village had once stood. None of the captives had been allowed out and above deck, but instead freshly captured maidens, weeping and bound, had been herded below decks to join those already there. Beside her mother and three sisters, the womenfolk of at least three or four other stolen families shared the dark, confined space.
Between these floods of human misery, there was the odd trickle as the passengers and crew of boats captured on the open seas were taken aboard. Athal thanked the gods thus far none of the captives had brought the plague with them. In the cramped confined and on what meager food the pirates allowed their human cargo it would have carried them all off before a week was out.
This time, however, when the deck hatch was thrown open, no line of scared, weeping captives stumbled down the stairs into the hold. Instead, a quartet of pirates appeared. Without a word, they opened the pen closest to the hatch and began extricating the captives inside. Fresh murmurs shot through the hold as the captives realized they had reached their destination. Soon, they would be taken ashore and sold into slavery.
Soon enough, one of the pirates stood outside Athal’s pen. They made no attempt to unload the occupants by families, simply dragging out whichever miserable girl happened to be closest at hand. Athal stumbled out, weak from her long confinement, but she was given no opportunity to recover. With a curse and a shove, she was sent stumbling to the hatch, part of the long line of women and girls shuffling up the stairs.
No sooner had Athal popped out on deck, dazzled by the midday light after weeks in the unending gloom of the hold, then another pirate grabbed the maiden. Before she knew what was happening, her arms had been pulled behind her back and her wrists bound once more with cord. A wooden rod was thrust between her teeth. Leather thongs had been run through holes drilled on either side of the bit, allowing the pirate to tie the gag on tightly.
Once Athal had been bound and gagged, another pirate grabbed the girl and dragged her to the side of the ship where he was busy roping a dozen or so captive girls together into a coffle with halter ropes around their necks. With a rush of fear, Athal realized that, just as they had unloaded the cages, the pirates were simply grabbing whichever captives happened to be closest from among the milling crowd of bound and gagged women on deck. None of Athal’s sisters or her mother had ended up in her coffle!
Frantically, the teen looked about, but before she could spot the rest of her family, a pirate grabbed the lead of the first girl in Athal’s line and started leading her down the gangplank to the dock. When the line of shuffling slaves reached Athal, her halter snapped taut, jerking the teen forward. With a quiet whimper she turned and stumbled down the gangplank following the line of bound girls.
As she did, Athal’s eyes widened in amazement, seeing the city to which she and the other captives had been brought. Somewhat less than a score of years in a quiet little fishing village had not prepared the girl for a metropolis of brick and stone which seemed to stretch on forever.
“And the crowds!” The teen thought. Just a quick glance at the narrow stretch of docks before her showed Athal more people then her whole village had held, of people and tribes she’d never imagined existed. Looking at the crowd reminded Athal that she wore naught by a flimsy linen shift, all the clothes she’d had on when the pirates snatched her and her family from their beds into the night. The weeks in the dirty hold had only made the shift still more tattered and threadbare. In this, she was among the more fortunate of the women and girls. Many of them had been left only rags or nothing at all by their captors.
Still, had her hands not been tied behind her back, Athal would have tried to cover herself. All she could do was blush, imagining every face in the throngs around her staring, noticing her shame. Truthfully, though, few took notice of the teen or the plight of the rest of the girls. The city to which they had been brought was one of the chief slave markets in the region, where pirates and slave traders brought their wares from hundreds of leagues away. The sight of a column of miserable, bound, half-naked women being led through the streets was too commonplace to take notice of.
The first destination for the newly arrived slaves was a large stone building with narrow, barred windows: part warehouse, part fortress. The name of the building was written over a wide gate in characters Athal couldn’t read, or even recognize. If she had, she would have learned that this was the main customs house for the port. All newly arrived cargo living or not, had to be inspected and taxed before it could be sold in the city.
Within, the slaves that had been unloaded ahead of her coffle milled about uncertainly, each group watched over by one or two of the pirates. Athal looked around and spotted her mother and younger sisters in some of the other groups. She grunted at them, but her attempts to call out were stymied by the bit tied between her teeth and the noises of the room, packed with well over a hundred slaves, many trying to communicate as she was, more simply weeping and moaning brokenly.
Not long after their arrival, Athal’s group was approached by a man whose fine robes and ornamented headdress marked him as an official of some importance. He was accompanied by two slave girls, both naked apart from scant loincloths and bronze collars. The first had a clay pot of ink and a narrow horsehair brush. The second girl carried a tall stack of thin wooden placards, one side covered with a layer of whitewash.
The official went to the girl at the front of the coffle and over the next several minutes subjected her to a thorough physical examination. No part of her young, nubile body was ignored. He checked the tone of her muscles on her arms and legs, the firmness of her buttocks, the smoothness of her belly, spread her lips to check the white, even teeth clamped tight over the wooden bit. He squeezed her breasts and even slipped a hand along her sex, ignoring the girl’s scandalized squeals.
At each point, the official spoke a short remake in the local tongue. His slave scribe, kneeling at the man’s feet, took one of the placards from her companion. She dipped her brush in the ink and then, with a series of quick, lithe movements, dragged the brush lightly across the surface of the wood, leaving several ornate characters marked down. Another remark and another set of markings on the board.
When the examination had finished, she handed it to her master. The placard had been fitted with a short cord on either end, allowing it to be hung around the neck of the weeping girl. The official meanwhile moved to the next girl and began his examinations afresh. His scribe took another blank board, inked her brush and started covering it with markings.
Eventually it was Athal’s turn. The teen squealed into the wooden bit, face flushing red as the thin shift that was all she wore was torn away by one of the pirates, leaving her completely naked. The official cared nothing for her embarrassment, treating her to the same, brusque examination as the others. His face held no signs of lust or joy in his casual pawing of the maid, his attitude similar to that of a merchant, examining any other sort of livestock at market. His laconic pronouncements were dutifully marked down by the scribe with brush and ink. Soon, Athal had the wooden board hung across her chest like the previous girls.
When the last girl in their short coffle had been graded and marked, the official left, his two slaves following after him to the next batch of newly arrived captives. Athal and the other girls, meanwhile, were dragged through another gate into one of the busy city streets. The naked Athal cringed, head bowed in shame as she was led through the throngs on her way to the slave market.
The slave market was not far from the docks where its living wares arrived. It was a large open square, ringed by columns and arches. Within the grounds, the slave merchants displayed their wares. Some had set up wooden stands, others brightly colored tents and awning. A few had gone to the trouble of assembling raised platforms where their slaves were made to stand, naked and exposed to the eyes of the crowd. Most, like Athal’s captors, simply found an open space of ground not yet claimed to place their captives and started calling out in the urging cry of merchants everywhere, extolling the qualities of their goods, denigrating those of the other, neighboring sellers and flattering the buyers who could surely tell the difference.
There was no great rush. Peasant girls like Athal were all too commonplace at the slave market. A steady trickle of people passed by, glancing down the row of bound, naked girls with an appraising eye, some pausing to read the markings of the placards hung round the neck of this girl or that. The pirates spoke to them in the foreign tongue, inviting them to inspect the bound captives. Along with the rest, Athal had her body pawed and groped again and again. Tears flowed freely, but they were all too common here as well.
Most of the time, the potential buyers would walk away. Others would stop and haggle price a moment or two, though none ended in a sale just yet. It was yet early in the day. The pirates did not wish to devalue their stock so soon while the buyers didn’t want to commit their money to any one girl while the market brimmed with countless other girls to consider.
Time wore on slowly and miserably. Soon, the midday sun climbed high overhead. Many of the customers departed to wait out the heat of the day. Only those most interested in getting a good deal browsed the line of bound men and women who stood, unsheltered, sweltering in the burning heat. Athal wished that someone, anyone, would come and buy her simply so she could escape the open square and the merciless sun which glared down on her.
Eventually, the sun dipped once more. The crowds returned from the taverns and gambling dens they’d lurked in, their eagerness redoubled. By now, they’d made the rounds of the market and had their picks in mind. The haggling took on a more serious hectoring tone. Ignorant of what was being said, Athal wondered more than once if a knife fight was about to break out over the price of a slave girl. But each time, the men would eventually arrive at the same number and shake hands. In an instant, they were the pleasantest of friends, the buyer counting out silver coins while the seller cut the girl in question from the rest of the coffle. Money and girl would be exchanged and that was that. The buyer departed, dragging his new slave with him.
Athal’s coffle began to deplete as girl after girl was sold and led away. Elsewhere, business was brisk for the other sellers. Once Athal caught a glimpse of her mother, bound and leashed being led off by an older couple. A little while later, she thought she spotted one of her sisters, part of a line of girls all purchased by the same wealthy patrician. The other two she couldn’t spot, no matter how she looked. Athal prayed they had all found kind owners, even as she hoped hers would be as well, when it was her turn to be sold.
That came late in the afternoon. By this point, only Athal and two other girls remained, still tethered together at the neck. The pirate selling them was evidently eager to sell them, so he could take the money he had earned and celebrate the end of a most profitable venture. He waved a hand over the coffle as he spoke, offering a single price for the three of them together.
He was haggling with another man whose plain tunic and lack of ornaments marked him as a servant himself. He was negotiating on behalf of the well dressed aristocratic woman who stood a half dozen paces away, feigning disinterest while she let someone else handle the grubby matters of commerce. Waiting with her was another servant, holding the lead of a short coffle of other slaves she had purchased, a half dozen young men and women naked with their hands tied.
Athal wondered what it would be like to be owned by this woman. She was clearly a rich woman from her silks and jewels, noble-born even. Did she have a mansion? A palace? To a girl who had lived her whole life in a cramped hut in a small village by the sea, even being a slave in a palace had to be worth something.
On the other hand, the older woman might prove a cruel and demanding mistress, the sort to work her slaves ragged and mistreat them. And even if she did live in a palace, there was no guarantee Athal would end up there. She might be sent out to a country estate, to toil in the fields from sunup to sundown. Or maybe the woman made her money from mines and Athal would be sent underground, never to see the sun again.
But whether the woman would be a good mistress or evil, it made little difference. Seller and servant came to an agreed upon price. The servant glanced back at his mistress, for her approval which she granted with a slight nod of the head. Hands shook, coins were exchanged and Athal and the others were sold. They were led over, the halter of the lead girl tied off to the other newly purchased slaves. With the tug of the rope round her neck, Athal was led off, to find what fate lay in store for her…