“Remove your garment, pretty slave,” said the red-haired girl.

Ilene did so.

“Go to that tree,” said the red-haired girl, indicating a slender-trunked tree at the edge of the camp clearing. Ilene went to it. “Hold to that branch, pretty slave,” said the red-haired girl, indicating a branch over Ilene's head. Tears in her eyes, Ilene grasped it.

There was the swift hiss of the switch and then the slap of its strike.

Ilene screamed with pain and fell, releasing the branch. She clutched the base of the tree's trunk. She looked over her shoulder at the red-haired girl. “Please,” she wept.

“Hold the branch, pretty little slave,” said the red-haired girl, not much pleased with her.

Ilene regarded her with horror.

I strode to the tree and, with two short lengths of binding fiber, tied Ilene's wrists to the branch.

She was weeping in pain.

“Let me beat her,” said the blond girl, one of the panther girls, in her ankle ring.

The red-haired girl went swiftly to the girl who had spoken and struck her twice. The blond girl, tears in her eyes, shrank back in the coffle, shoulder stinging, and hid herself among the other girls.

The red-haired girl then strode to Ilene.

The Earth girl must now endure nine strokes. The red-haired girl was excellent with the switch. She knew well how to beat a slave.

Ilene would not soon forget her beating.

It took more than two Ehn to deliver the next five strokes. Ilene did not know when, or where on her body, they would fall. She would stand there, her wrists bound over her head, apart, on the branch, waiting. Then suddenly there would be the hiss, and, somewhere on her body, the swift, lashing fall of the switch.

The red-haired girl had handled the psychological dimension of the beating beautifully.

Even when she was not being struck Ilene would sometimes cry out. “No! Don't hit me!” Sometimes, waiting, unstruck, she would cry out as though she had been struck. She jerked, trying to free her wrists. She twisted helplessly, but could not free herself. Then, shaking her head, weeping, she began to writhe and beg incoherently for mercy. She, of course, as a slave girl, would receive none.