Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2013 22:57:25 +0100 From: Ben Hur Subject: The Unique Experience Part VI If I had expected that I would have to get out of my seat now, I was wrong. Mehmed took a little pot from the table that contained some kind of ointment. He put some of the content on a small and not very clean looking towel - it apparently had been used on many new slaves before me - and then began to rub it in a rather rough way - indeed as if he just was rubbing slave cattle - into all parts of my skin that had been shaven completely a few minutes earlier. He started - after pushing my loin-cloth aside - with my perineum and genitals, then my armpits and finally my head. Yes, in that order, not the reverse one, as you yourself would have done in your own case, so my crotch sweat eventually landed on my shorn bald skull. I couldn't tell whether Mehmed did it in this way just by accident because the order in which the several parts of my body were dealt with didn't bother him at all, or if he did this intentionally to make it clear that I that was reduced to just a piece of slavemeat now, for which the human need for hygiene wasn't important anymore and whose head and buttocks therefore had become totally interchangable. Well, robbed of all hair and smooth as a mirror, in a way they indeed had become that. Only the words stamped on the slavetag underneath the heavy collar around my throat stated clearly what was above and what was below, and perhaps prevented Mehmed in the end from turning me accidentally upside-down. However, as the towel in view of its undeterminate grubby color must have been used without any interim cleaning on many slaves before, it in fact was totally irrelevant in which order all was done, as my body odors and body liquids were only added to and mixed up with those of many of my predecessors. Well, for slave-owners all slaves are just numbers in their slave stable, without any individuality of their own, so for them there doesn't exist any reason to serve them with separate washclothes or the like. To be honest, I was paying only partial attention to this, as the salve Mehmed was rubbing on my body was demanding nearly all my focus. It was rather corrosive stuff, that in an aggressive way penetrated into the folds of my skin. Why Mehmed was doing all this wasn't clear to me at that time; later I understood that it was to counteract the natural growth of my hair on all clean shaven spots. And although it didn't totally stop that, my hair growth during the next months was slowed down drastically, so the time-consuming shaving rotations of all the galley-slaves in the future could be reduced to a minimum. In the meanwhile Abdel had taken the broom leaning on the other table to sweep away all my shaved hair on the floor to a waste pit in the corner. Well, that was what I could expect, so I didn't give it much attention, just waiting for the order - I was already so far gone that I just waited for orders - for the next step. But after Abdel finished sweeping the floor, no order came. Something else happened. Mehmed and he each suddenly snatched one of my shackled hands and moved them to the sides of the chair. Only now I recognized that at the level of my thighs there were small braces attached to my seat that I hadn't noticed previously. Before I was aware of it, they had taken a padlock from the table and had locked the first link next to the manacle to the chair. Abdel thereafter did the same with the big ring attached to my only anklet at the right; near the floor there were similar small braces. My free left foot was put in a leather cuff that was attached to such a brace on the other side. Now I couldn't move my hands and feet anymore, and this made me rather anxious. Why were they doing this, whereas they had shaven me just wearing my chains without immobilizing me to the chair? Was there something very painful ahead, something that would make me writhe in an ungovernable way unless doing so was physically impossible, that led them to impose this bondage to make their uncoming job easier? Because it didn't stop with that; Abdel quickly produced a thick rope to fasten me further, winding it several times around my torso and the chair at the same time, and then tightened it until I could barely breathe, but indeed not much more than that. I considered protesting against them doing this, but as they would do it anyway and thus my protests would make no sense as likewise all my protests had up until now, I kept my mouth shut. But I was frightened. What were they planning to do? After binding me securely to my seat, Mehmed put on rubber gloves, whereupon Abdel again shooved the front piece of my loin-cloth aside like a curtain. My raw shaven and freshly anointed genitals were thus exposed for the third time. Abdel now picked up an open ring of what appeared to be stainless steel, put it around the shaft of my cock behind my balls, and clicked it shut. Later I would discover that this cock ring had no keyhole to open it: once shut it stayed shut. Attached to the ring at the bottom was a short chain, its other end leading nowhere. Abdel for the moment let it hang down under my balls. Then Mehmed took a phial and a small cloth from the table - this time a clean and still unused one - and let some fluid drip out of the phial onto the cloth. Then he caught my penis with one hand and with the other wrapped the cloth around the gland of my penis, rubbing it firmly. After the cloth was removed, I smelt the perfume scent of some disinfectant. It was quite clear what they planned to do: they were going to pierce me. Although I had had it never done to myself, of course I had seen pierced cocks and other body parts before. I'm not a totally ignorant greenhorn, in case you may have supposed that! One of my rowing-mates - those at home, not here at the galley, to be clear - did wear a Prince Albert. He had shown it to me once as we got very close to each other while taking a shower together after a regatta on some Dutch lake. Would I get a Prince Albert, too? And would I be able to endure getting one without narcotic - I knew those guys meanwhile well enough to know that narcotics to diminish the pain of their victims wouldn't be the kind of stuff they wanted to pay for without strict necessity - without recoiling myself because of the pain? I mean: if they wouldn't expect me to do that, why would they otherwise have roped me tightly to my chair? Well, I said to myself at the moment I discovered their plans, I should be able to survive a piercing for a Prince Albert. I'm not a wimp! Perhaps I would have been able to survive that indeed without any problems if it had been a normal size one. But it wasn't. Mehmed took up a needle that showed halfway such a thickness, that I was really flabbergasted. They, so to say, didn't just start with size 1 to have the hole in my prick extended gradually size after size in proportion to my prick getting used to its penis ring. No: they started immediately with size 10 or something like that right off the bat. So when the needle that I saw approaching my male member with horror indeed pierced the gland of my cock, and by permeating it gradually made the opening for my future Prince Albert ring wider and wider, I nearly exploded. I cried out because of the pain that stretching out the new hole through my most tender and intimate part produced, but luckily it was over within a few seconds, and then the worst pain slowly faded away. There was a bit of bleeding when Mehmed shoved the huge ring that he picked up from the table - a ring that was huge enough to ring a bull's penis - into the freshly pierced hole. The ring inserted now had a diameter of a couple of inches and wasn't much under a half an inch thick. I howled because of the pain it still caused. Mehmed turned the Prince Albert ring round through the hole in the gland of my penis; it rotated without problems. Before closing it with a pair of tongs, he lifted the free end of the chain connected to my cock ring and pulled the open end of the Prince Albert ring through the most outward link. Then both open ends were pushed together and sealed, my Prince Albert connected to my cock ring by the short chain. No problem - as long as your cock stays limp and would hang flaccid downward. But in case of an erection .... Mehmed guessed my troubled thoughts and said: 'You better not get an erection the first days, slave, before the wound is healed, as that would be very painful'. Yes, they didn't need to tell me, that was already totally clear to me. 'Your new ring will stay on forever, as slaves aren't supposed to waste their cum by giving themselves satisfaction. Masturbation is absolutely forbidden. A full erection will be impossible for you from now on. Slaves have to stay chaste all the time, because their permanent horniness makes them serve better at the oars!' He paused shortly, to add satanically, 'and thereafter'. If his only reference was to physical service or also to totally different kinds of 'service' wasn't quite clear to me, but Mehmed didn't clear up this question, which worried me from now on next to all the other worrying questions that had come to my mind before. Was I as a slave to be abused sexually by some sordid pervert on that galley, perhaps to be raped? In the future I would learn .... For the time being the most important thing was to suppress all my own sexual feelings, as getting a stiffening penis would be unbearable after just having been pierced in this brutal way thanks to the inexorable short chain connecting my Prince Albert to my cock ring. I thought it was all over now finally, but I was wrong. They didn't untie the tight ropes that kept me melded to my chair during my piercing. Whereas Abdel stayed where he was, I saw Mehmed walk to the coal fire at the dim far end of the room that I had glanced at briefly when I first entered it. I saw him putting a glove on his right hand, and then bending forward and picking up some long, small piece of iron. It was too dark over there to see from where I was exactly what kind of instrument it was this time, but it clearly wasn't a pair of thongs. Apart from that, as I already had stated before, there were no shackles or chains in this place to be riveted on the last free parts of my body, so that possibility could be crossed out. This time it was a long, thin iron pole and it apparently had a small rectangular cross-piece at the other end - I couldn't imagine what it was, not only because of the darkness but also because Mehmed didn't keep it immobile in his left hand, and moreover as he moved his body was usually between the strange object and me, as the moon hides the sun during an eclipse. But in the moments when Mehmed was not obstructing my sight of it, I saw him fiddling with the cross-piece on the pole with his right hand; it seemed to me that he was arranging something. In the meanwhile he casted short glances to the left, as if he were looking for some information on a paper - later on it indeed turned out to be a kind of formulary lying on the small table next to the coal fire. How long it took him to arrange everything that apparently had to be arranged, I can't say, but when he was ready he stuck the far end of the iron pole into the coal fire and let it rest there. It rested there for several minutes until Mehmed picked it up and took a look at it. While he was moving the pole, for just a second it was caught by a ray of light coming from one of the few lamps hanging down from the ceiling. But this mere second was enough for me to take a much better look at it than at any time before and to recognize what kind of instrument exactly was heating up in the fire. It came as a complete shock - yes, still after all I had had to endure already in the past minutes - when I suddenly became aware what this iron instrument was designed for. I couldn't believe my eyes. No, I couldn't believe it! This was incredible. Even in my biggest fears the idea wouldn't have come to my mind. This was far more horrible than everything else. Oh, my God! They ... they were going to brand me! Never in my life will I have looked as bewildered as I must have at the very moment that I became aware of this fact. This couldn't be true! My entire person, my entire soul and body resisted the idea that my eyes might be telling me the truth, that such a horrible instrument of torture could soon touch my skin. No, that wouldn't be the case! No, that couldn't be the case! This wasn't real! I must just have been dreaming now, I would surely awake in a few seconds and find myself safely in my bed at home in Holland. Than all would turn out to have been just a nightmare, and after breakfast I would leave my apartment as usual to attend a history lecture at the university about, let's say, the iron industry in some distant past. But it was no dream. Instead of cycling relaxedly through the streets of Amsterdam within a few minutes, I was tied to a torture chair, and the next minutes would become by far the worst minutes of my life. Because I didn't awaken in the next seconds - I stayed chained and tied to my chair. And after another few seconds Mehmed again handled the pole in such a way that it again was caught for a short moment by a ray of light of one of the ceiling lamps. I hadn't been mistaken, there was no denial possible anymore, as I had seen such stuff once in The Hague, in the old Prison Gate, where all kinds of ancient torture instruments were exhibited - and this one too. Mehmed was holding a real branding iron - and it was intended for me. I immediately now knew where that infernal cry I had heard came from while I was chained next door, and what had brought it about. It flashed through my mind in the moment I became aware of what Mehmed was preparing. And in another flash also the enigmatic words of Ali, the chain smith's assitant, came to me, when he warned me not to move while his chief was hammering the hot rivet of my collar shut: 'We don't want to burn our slaves without reason, only when there is a good reason for it ....' Apparently this was the good reason he was hinting at .... It may sound strange, but only now did it really permeate to me - at least, only now it forced a physical and vocal reaction out of me, after being for some moments totally paralyzed with horror after having recognized the branding iron and after having recognized that I hadn't mistaken something else to be one. My whole person, every fiber of my body said: No! And so my mouth opened automatically and shouted as loud as I could: 'Noooooo!!!!' It was the longest and most intense 'No' I will ever have shouted, and never before and afterward will such a 'No' have come from so deep out of my heart than the 'No' I produced at that very moment. But I didn't stop there. Now that I had recovered my speech, I lost my self-control and a whole battery of not well-considered words left my mouth, and panic-stricken as I was they stumbled over each other. 'Noooooooo!' I shouted again. 'You can't do this! You fucking bastards! You fucking idiots!' (Or something like that, and that presumably several times, as I shouted a lot in my complete confusion. I apologize to my readers for not knowing now any more exactly what I shouted altogether, so for not being able to give a punctual record of it, but it was something like this.) I was totally bewildered, and in my rage I left all decency and decorum behind. 'No, you can't brand me! You, you, you idiots! I'm not an animal! You fucking sadists! Who the hell gave you the right to do this?!? Let me go! You bastards! Let me go! Untie me now! Immediately!' Meanwhile. I struggled against the ropes that secured me to the chair and my rage apparently gave me so much power that I suddenly succeeded in loosening them; the knot Abdel had made behind my back, was apparently not very well done - routine has its price. Anyhow, the knot was by my unexpected uprising - unexpected even by me up until a few seconds ago - suddenly unraveled. It will be clear to you, that one always better not to use rope instead of chains to keep slaves in their designated place, as they will not be able to break out of them so easily. Mehmed didn't take any notice of me, but Abdel was taken aback by my uncontrolled outburst and my breaking of my last applied bond. To be quite clear: I could move my chest and abdomen a bit now, but not more than that; my shackled limbs stayed safely attached to the braces at the sides of my chair. So escaping of course was still impossible. In fact, I hadn't done than halfway release myself. But of course what I was doing now was not intended by my slavers, neither the physical nor the vocal parts of my rebellious action. On Abdel and Mehmed I even would have made the impression of total intractability, if they had known about my resistance in the earlier stages of my enslavement. Or did they know indeed? Were they told about that by their colleagues, and had it just eluded my notice at that moment, as I was understandably concentrating in the first place on my own position? Anyhow, Abdel was firm to put an end to it. While I was still shouting and scolding without interruption, being beside myself because of my fear and fury, he came to me, and slapped me several times right on my face. And than - when I was suddenly silenced by that, as I was as taken aback by that as much as he had been a few seconds before by my sudden outburst - HE started to shout. 'You damned slave, you will keep your bloody mouth shut.' Slap! 'Who the hell do you think you are?!?' Slap! 'You scum of the drain! You, you ...' Slap! 'You, you ... you damned piece of European trash!' Slap! 'You will lose your recalcitrance soon, slave, be sure about that!' Slap! 'You're just cattle now!' Slap! 'Nothing more than cattle!' Slap! ] 'I don't want to hear any sound coming out your damned throat anymore, do you hear me, slave?!?' Slap! 'You will learn to keep your mouth shut!' Slap! 'You will learn never to open your mouth unless asked, you fucking slave!' Slap! 'You will be severely punished for your misbehavior, be sure about that. All will be reported to your overseer! You will learn to behave! You will learn to address yourself only in the most humble way to your Masters, you fucking slave!' Slap! 'Do you understand?!?' Slap! Abdel was exhausted now by his own furious outburst, and shortly was out of breath. And I was that much out of balance now, and moreover the many slaps to my face did really hurt so much that for the time being I was unable to say anything either. So, for a few seconds, there was total silence. The only thing one could hear in the room now was the fire burning, in which Mehmed had stuck the branding iron that they intended to use on me soon. Abdel apparently had said now all he had to say, and having used up his supply of accusations, he continued to grumble only to himself, whereupon he picked up the ropes that had partly fallen on the floor. Again they were fastened around my torso, and this time, as to make clear to me that he was very serious, they were tightened even more. I recognized how Abdel in a rather resolute way made a new knot at the back of the chair and I felt the ropes drawn tight in a much rougher manner than he had done the first time. Again secured in a totally immovable way, I had to wait for the horrible things to come. They came soon enough. Mehmed was ready now. The preparation of the branding iron had come to an end, it was apparently hot enough now to mark me as a slave. He therefore turned himself in our direction now, holding the handle of the branding iron in his right. Appalled I stared at the cross-beam at the opposite end that was glowing red in a very ominous way. I was tremendously frightened by the horrible sight. I discovered that I started to tremble, to tremble all over my body - as far as the ropes allowed me to. I - of course, I would say - couldn't discover what kind of signs - characters? ciphers? - were on the branding iron but, to be honest, that was not what was bothering me the most at that very menacing moment. Above all I was fearing the pain of the branding itself, not the sight of the mark afterwards. That may perhaps seem strange to you, as the pain would just be temporary, and the mark eternal, but you choose your priorities in such a moment. Mehmed approached me slowly, holding the branding iron in front of him. Scared stiff I saw its red-glowing cross-beam coming nearer. Again I lost my self-control, only this time not to shout but to sob. 'No, please, don't do that. Please', I wept. 'I don't want to be branded! Please Sir. Please! Please!' Mehmed only drew nearer. 'Please, don't do this to me, Sir! Please! Not the branding iron, Sir! Please!' Meanwhile my tears dropped from my eyes onto the ropes beneath. It didn't help me. Mehmed even seemed to enjoy my mortal fear, my desperate idle entreaty. His only words were: 'All slaves are branded. So you of course will be, too.' I continued sobbing and pleading, but softer than before, in a way less addressing Mehmed than myself, to assure myself that this wasn't going to happen, that this couldn't happen. 'Keep him steady, Abdel', I heard Mehmed say to his companion. In a way it sounded as if coming from far away, as I was mentally absent for a while now with my eyes closed out of some idle hope that not seeing the approaching horror might result in escaping it. 'The slave may not like it when his skin is touched by a piece of iron that is 1200 degrees hot', Mehmed added. As if by any means I would be able to resist, Abdel now threw his arms around me underneath my nipples and pressed me with all his force against the back of my chair. This brought me back to reality. When I opened my eyes, my torturer stood already directly in front of me and I lost all hope - if I really had had any - that my late pleas for mercy after all my scolding would help me and that I would be spared the branding iron. An unprecedented agony of fear took hold of me, now that the horrible moment was imminent. My heart pounded, my breath caught and cold perspiration broke out on my brow. Now every second seemed to last an hour. I looked frightened to death at the branding iron that Mehmed, standing still himself now, moved slowly but irrevocably in the direction of my left chest, above my nipples. The, suddenly he pushed it forward in a rush and the red-hot metal touched my skin. I was prepared for it and I was not prepared for it, because it is impossible to be really prepared for it. I don't know whether you have ever been branded. In the moment the branding iron touched my skin, there was a very short instant of hope, because one moment I didn't feel anything. But then immediately after that I exploded. A pain, an agony of an intensity totally unknown to me, struck my skin, struck my nerves, struck my whole body. The fuses of my nervous system collapsed when it carried the unimaginable pain to my brain. Within a second all my physical and mental resistance completely broke down. Only one desire ruled all my thoughts completely now: that this might stop, and stop immediately. My throat automatically gave way to animal-like sounds of mortal agony. Totally possessed by the most basic instinct of man, the wish to survive, my vocal cords therefore produced the same infernal cry as my predecessor had done in this place half an hour or so ago - the kind of scream I had never heard before then and a kind of scream I had myself never produced before and hope never to have to produce again. My screaming must have pierced to the marrow, too, but neither Mehmed nor Abdel - being used to this and therefore kindly not reprimanding me for the extremely loud noice I made this time - moved a muscle. Abdel used his to keep me in a firm headlock against the chair so that I wouldn't move my breast an inch, to make sure that the brand would have nice sharp edges instead of becoming blurred and thus perhaps illegible. And Mehmed pushed the branding iron against the predestined spot on my chest with as much vigor as he could, and kept it there completely immobile. It stayed there for fifteen, twenty seconds perhaps, but to me it was as if it stayed there for hours. First my skin turned red at the spot where the branding iron touched it, and then the flesh underneath was roasted, too, because as a slave brand should be indelible and has to stay forever, the branding can't be limited to just the skin only, as in that case it would be too superficial. So the longer the branding iron was pushed against my chest, the deeper its scorching furor penetrated into my body - and as long as it stayed firmly in place, so lasted my infernal screaming, too. The pain was really incredible. My chest jerked and spasmed reflexively under the burning iron, as far as it was able to do so, although that, thanks to the ropes and Abel's firm grip, wasn't very far. It was unbearable, my eyes nearly rolled out of their sockets. In vain my tortured body tried to escape the diabolical instrument that was damaging it irreversibly for eternity, to escape this torture of Hell. The infernal pain went through my whole body, pulsing through every fiber of it - and joining the pain soon came the horrible sound and too the horrible smell: the sizzling sound and the scorching smell of searing flesh, of MY searing flesh, of the searing flesh of my left chest above my nipple. It made me sicken. My brain couldn't stand it any longer and turned off. I fainted and lost consciousness for a (short?) while, which would have put an end to my screaming. How long I was unconscious, I don't know, but I presume it wasn't for very long, as they expected to bring the next candidates through the entrance door soon, and thus had to speed up their work. A splash of water in my face made me come to my senses. Immediately after recovering, I felt again a severe, but now more aching, pain on my chest at the spot of the brand that would last for hours and hours to come, only very, very gradually diminishing until - after a couple of days - the wound more or less healed and I would feel nothing anymore, at least as long as I didn't touch the spot. But the indelible slave brand itself, its color in the meantime turning from fiery red to dark black, would stay forever and thus would mark me as a galley-slave forever. It thus would remind me of these terrible minutes of torture for the rest of my life. The mental shock of the branding and the immense bodily suffering it brought about once more imprinted my new slave status on me. I was a branded slave now. With horror I looked downward to discover what it looked like. I clearly could distinguish from above that hated five-letter-word, written in capitals one couldn't overlook: S L A V E. Slave, yes, slave. No misinterpretation was possible anymore about what I had become: a slave. Underneath those five characters (that dashed into my mind with the effect of a mallet hammering on my skull) was a range of smaller symbols, letters and figures that I couldn't decipher upside down that quickly. But it clearly was a much longer code than the 'G-46' I was to react to immediately when commanded by a slavedriver at the oars. Mehmed saw me looking, and as if guessing my thoughts, he said: 'Your branding is done, slave. Your eternal slave number in the slave register is now printed ineffaceably on your chest. You better learn it by heart too, slave! It's B-2307-X-1856. I repeat: B-2307-X-1856.' He paused for a short while. 'But if you forget, you can always ask your neighbor on the oar.' He laughed, and then turned his back to me to pick up something from the table next to my chair. Disgusted I looked down again to my new, painfully burning slave brand. With some pains I indeed could decipher it now: B-2307-X-1856. I now understood what Mehmed had done with the branding iron when he was fiddling with its cross-beam in that dim corner: he had looked into some register - indeed, the slave register, in which I was registered now - to learn what my number should be and then had looked for the pieces with the right characters and ciphers to place them on the branding iron. Meanwhile, Mehmed turned back to me with another pot with another oinment in it. He took a new small towel and put some of the content on it, then he rather carefully - compared at least with the uncareful treatment I had had to endure most of the time here until now - spread it over my brand. At first it made the wound even more painful, as the salve was rather corrosive, but than it had a stupefacting effect, like some narcotic. It must have been a kind of disinfectant to accelerate the healing of the brand wound. While Mehmed was doing that, Abdel took the still red-hot glowing branding iron back to the corner where it had come from. I heard some hissing - apparently it was put in a bucket with water to cool it down more quickly. Presumably another slave was to become branded soon after me, and then of course other characters had to be taken out of the letter-case to make up the right slave number for the branding iron for the next candidate. Was my successor already waiting for it next door, freshly chained and collared? Had he in that case heard me crying while I was branded, as I had heard in the case of my predecessor, not knowing where it came from but fearing the worst? The worst - well, this was it, and I had survived it if you can call it that. Because mentally I was at the end of my resources, and in a way felt dull and dead. I was totally exhausted by all the horror I had gone through since I entered this damned building. But I was to awaken soon out of my complete lethargy. 'You better keep your dirty fingers far away from your chest the next days, slave, then it will heal more easily' I heard Mehmet saying. 'That's as much in your own interest as it is in ours. And you better not forget that last point, as it is the most important one', he added with a menacing voice. 'So again: keep your fucking fingers far away from it.' At that moment I didn't feel the slightest impulse to move any extended part of my body whatsoever for the next many hours. All my limbs hurt, my collared neck hurt, my branded breast hurt, my shaved neck hurt, my shaved armpits hurt, my shaved balls hurt, my pierced cock hurt. By my account, no spot was spared an unlikely harsh treatment by those bloody bastards. My skin nearly everywhere felt raw if not worse. I would prefer to go into coma immediately in this place - and indeed, I suddenly felt very tired. But I was not to stay here to recover from my sufferings in this chair, so I soon had to move some limbs whether I liked that or not. After Mehmed had finished spreading the disinfectant, and Abdel had returned from the corner where he left the branding iron, they started to unfasten me. First the ropes came off, then the padlocks that attached my shackles to the braces of the chair were opened. I was set free - at least, within the strict limits my chains imposed on me. 'Get out of the chair, slave', Mehmed commanded. 'You're totally finished here.' Above all, I felt totally finished in every respect myself. Slowly, still partly in a trance, I rose from the chair. Immediately, in case I might have forgotten that I wore them, my chains (that had been silent all the time that I was braced to the chair) started to rattle and to remind me of my enslaved state - as if I had needed such a reminder. Tottering because of those heavy chains, the full weight of which rested now again on my body, I went in the direction of the door at the far end, next to the coal fire and the bucket with the branding iron. Passing by, I indeed recognized some paper - containing my new entry in the slave register - lying on the table next to it. Mehmed, who had shown me the way, kindly opened the heavy door while saying to somebody on the other side of it: 'Next slave finished.' The door, I recognized when I reached it, gave way to another corridor. Another 'Roman' soldier - to call him so - was waiting there, and commanded brusquely, 'Follow me, slave.' So I did. What else could I do? The last drive to resist was branded out of me now. I only wished for a place to rest and to recover as soon as possible. Here, in the corridor, there was none. Perhaps there was one behind the next door this guy was opening for me now. Mehmed meanwhile had returned to the branding room. Although because of my exhaustion this time I was nearly collapsing under the burden of my heavy collar and chains, in the end I nevertheless succeeded in reaching this next door, that gave access to a small room. Inside there indeed was a row of seats. And moreover, there was not only standing there another 'Roman'. There were also sitting two other recently captured victims - naked, shaved, chained, collared and branded exactly the same way as I was, apart from another number on their chest and on their slavetag. Those small details were the only 'principal' things in their looks by which they differed from each other - and from me, as I realised immediately after discovering that. Moreover, they also looked as exhausted as I was. They were the first other slaves I saw in my life.