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expected to obtain at the exchange point.
    It was perhaps not wise to press for more. Sheera, a leader, a highly
    intelligent woman, doubtless understood that she might have betrayed
    information. Her knife was cutting at the sand. She was not looking at me. She
    was only too obviously irritated, now intensely suspicious. More specific
    information I expected to obtain from the captured panther girls on board the
    ship. Panther girls generally know the usual territories of various bands. They
    might even know, approximately, the locations of the various camps, and dancing
    circles. I was not likely to obtain that information from free women. I expected
    however, under interrogation, to be able to obtain it from the helpless girls,
    at my mercy, on the Tesephone. Afterwards I would sell them. I had learned
    enough at the exchange point to confirm my original information, to add to it
    somewhat, and to be able, in the light of it, to evaluate the responses of my
    captives on board the ship. I smiled to myself. They would talk. Afterwards,
    when I had learned what I wished to know, I would sell them in Lydius.
    “A steel knife for each,” I proposed to Sheera, “and twenty arrow points, of
    steel, for each.”
    “Forty arrow points for each, and the knives,” said Sheera, cutting at the sand.
    I could see she did not much want to conduct these negotiations. Her heart was
    not in the bargaining. She was angry.
    “Very well,” I said.
    “And a stone of candies,” she said, looking up, suddenly.
    “Very well,” I said.
    “For each!” she demanded.
    “Very well,” I said.
    She slapped her knees and laughed. The girls seemed delighted.
    There was little sugar in the forest, save naturally in certain berries, and
    simple hard candies, such as a child might buy in shops in Ar, of Ko-ro-ba,
    were, among the panther girls in the remote forests, prized.
    It was not unknown that among the bands in the forests, a male might be sold for
    as little as a handful of such candies. When dealing with men, however, the
    girls usually demanded, and received, goods of greater value to them, usually
    knives, arrow points, small spear points; sometimes armlets, and bracelets and
    necklaces, and mirrors; sometimes slave nets and slave traps, to aid in their
    hunting’ sometimes slave chains, and manacles, to secure their catches.
    I had the goods brought from the ship, with scales to weigh out the candies.
    Sheera, and her girls, watched carefully, not trusting men, and counted the
    arrow points twice.
    Satisfied, Sheera stood up. “Take the slaves,” she said.
    The nude male wretches were, by men from the Tesephone, cut down.
    They fell to the sand, and could not stand. I had them placed in slave chains.
    “Carry them to the ship,” said I to my men.
    The girls, as the slaves were carried toward the water, swarmed around them,
    spitting on them, and striking them, jeering and mocking them.
    “This one”, said one of the girls, “will look well chained at the bench of a
    galley.”
    “This one,” said Sheera, poking the other in the shoulder with her knife, “is
    not bad.” She laughed. “Sell him to a rich woman.”
    He turned his head away from her, his eyes closed, a male slave.
    Male slaves, on Gor, are not particularly valuable, and do not command high
    prices. Most labor is performed by free men. Most commonly, male slaves are
    utilized on the cargo galleys, and in the mines, and on the great farms. They
    also serve, frequently, as porters at the wharves. Still, perhaps they are
    fortunate to have their lives, even at such a price. Males captured in war, or
    in the seizure of cylinders or villages, or in the pillaging of caravans, are
    commonly slain. The female is the prize commodity in the Gorean slave market. A
    high price for a male is a silver tarsk, but even a plain wench, of low caste,
    provided she moves well to the touch of the auctioneer’s coiled whip, will bring
    as much, or more. An exception to the low