by John Norman
They must find her, not me!
Ute, moaning, stunned, sank to her hands and knees, shaking her head. I threw the rock down beside her. The men would assume she had fallen and struck her head.
Quickly I fled back into the brush and hid.
Ute struggled to her feet, but stumbled and fell again, moaning, to her hands and knees.
I saw them seize her.
She was still stunned, half conscious. While she was still on her hands and knees, they cut the camisk from her, discarding it. They threw her forward on her stomach. One pulling her wrists behind her back and binding them, the other crossing her ankles and lashing them together.
I was pleased. Ute had been taken.
I only feared that she might tell them that I was about. But somehow I knew that she could not. Ute was stupid. I knew she would not betray me.
I thus, cleverly, eluded my pursuers.
I would continue my journey to the village of Rarir, which I thought I might now be able to find. I could tell them, in that village, that I had been a friend of Ute's whom I hoped they would remember. They would befriend me. In time, I would use the help of the villagers to find my way to the exchange island of Teletus, where I could find, if all went well, Ute's foster parents. I had little doubt but what they would care for me, and be kind to me, for I had been a friend of Utes, their foster daughter, so long ago fallen slave on the journey to the Sardar. I could tell them and would, that Ute had told me to find them, and had promised me that they would care for me. Ute and I had been desperately trying to reach them. I would tell them, only we had fallen in with slavers and, unfortunately, only I had escaped. Would they care for me? I had little doubt but what they would. I expected that they would beg me, in Ute''s place, to permit myself to be adopted as their daughter/ I was much pleased.
* * *
I continued the journey to Rarir.
I moved by night, and, by day, slept in Ka-la-na thickets.
I was stirring in my bed of soft grasses, hidden in such thicket, half asleep. I was drowsy. There were insects about. I had been well fed the night before, for I had stopped, hidden in the darkness, near a peasant village, where, from a pole, I had stolen a piece of drying meat, bosk flesh. It was far superior to what I had been able to snare.
I had not cooked my meat since Ute's capture. I was not confident of my ability to construct or use an efficient fire drill. More importantly, I knew that it was dangerous to make a fire. I had well learned this.
Mostly I ate fruits and nuts, and some roots. Occasionally I would supplement this diet with the raw flesh of small birds, or that of an occasional brush urt, which I would manage to snare. However, last night, and the night before, at another village, I had managed to steal meat. I had resolved that I would feed myself in this fashion. I was surely not tempted to sample the small amphibians or the loathsome, fat green insects Ute had called to my attention. They might have been a source of protein, but rather than touch such things to my lips I would have preferred to starve! It was easier to steal meat, good bosk meat, from ignorant peasants! I lay on my back, drowsy, looking up at the bright sky between the interlaced branches canopied over my head. The day was warm. I smiled.
Then, suddenly, far off, I became aware of a noise. It seemed like the shouting of men, and a clanging and beating of metals, as though pans or kettles might be being struck.
I did not much care for the noise.
In a few minutes it became clear that the sounds were becoming closer. I began to grow apprehensive.
In my camisk, I climbed to my feet, lifting my head.
There was a din, coming from the direction of the village, seeming to move towards me, gradually, through the thicket.
Irritated, I shrugged, and, picking up the fibers I had used for snares, began to move away from the din. I picked some fruit and nuts on the way. The din seemed to be getting louder, which I did not care for. It was coming from behind me.
I walked before it.
It was not long before I realized that if I did not alter my direction I would have departed the vast thicket, in which I had taken refuge.
Accordingly I turned to my left, picking some fruit as I went.
Then, to my irritation, even closer, I heard the din, and now part of it seemed to be coming from before me.
I then became apprehensive, and, half running, turned back the other direction. I had run no more than two or three Ihn when it became clear to me that the din was now, too, coming from in front of me.
I turned again, this time frantically.
The din, beating on pans and kettles, and the shouting, was now sweeping towards me, in a vast semicircle.
I suddenly realized I was being hunted!
Only from before me was there no sound. I was terrified. I began to run in that direction, toward the edge of the thicket, but then I was afraid. I would lose the cover of the thicket. Moreover, they might be driving me towards hunters, or nets! The silence terrified me as much as the din.
I must slip between their lines.
Some animals fled past me, away from the din, tabuk and brush urts. Carefully, concealing myself as much as possible, I started back toward the din. The din became loud, terrible, and the shouting. The noise, the knowledge that I was being hunted, made me suddenly feel irrational, driven. I wanted only to flee from the sound.
The din became insufferably loud.
I pressed toward it.
Then my heart sank!
There must have been two hundred or more peasants, men, children and women, all shouting, and beating on their kettles and pans. The women and children carried sticks and switches, the men spears, flails, forks and clubs.
They were too close together, there were too many of them!
A child saw me and he cried out and began to beat more loudly on his pan. I turned and fled.
The din now became maddeningly pressing, intolerable, ringing in my brain, closing in on me.
I could do nothing but fly toward the silence.
Then, in the sunlight of the bright morning, late, almost at noon, I fled from the thicket, across the grass of the open field.
I ran irrationally, driven, terrified.
I kept running.
Then, exhausted, I looked back. The peasants had stopped at the edge of the Ka-la-na thicket, in their great numbers. They no longer shouted, they no longer beat on their pans.
I looked ahead of me. There was nothing. No strong peasant lads waited there, to run me down, to strip and bind me, and lead me, my neck roped, back to the village. There were no nets. There was nothing. I cried out with joy and fled across the grasses.
They had wanted only to drive me from the thicket!
I was still free.
I stopped.
I stood in the bright, knee-high grasses of that windblown, flowing field. I felt the sun on my body, the grass touching my calves. My feet felt beneath them the black, warm, root-filled, living earth of Gor. The Ka-la-na thicket was yellow in the distance, the peasants standing at its edge, not moving. The sky was deep, and blue, and bright with sunlight. I inhaled the fresh, glorious air of the planet Gor. How beautiful it was!
The peasants did not pursue me.
I was free!
I put my head back and standing feet spread, leaned backwards, with my hands spreading my hair in the wind. I felt the wind lift it. I was pleased. I was free!
Suddenly my hand flew before my mouth. High, lofty, small in the vertical depths of that glorious sky, there was a speck. I shook my head, no! No!
I looked back toward the peasants. They had not moved.
I knelt down on one knee in the grasses, my eyes fixed on the speck. It was circling.
I saw it far overhead, first to my right, and then behind me, and then to my left, and then before me.
I cried out with misery.
I knew myself, small on the grasses, far below, to be the center of that circle. I began to run, madly, frantically across the grasses.
I stoppe
d, and turned, and looked back and upward. I cried out with misery. I saw the bird turn, swirling in the sky. I saw the sun, for a brief instant, flash from the helmet of its rider. The bird had wheeled in my direction. It was now screaming, descending, wings beating, streaking towards me.
I screamed and began to run, madly, irrationally, across the grasses. I heard the scream of the bird behind me, and the beating of its great wings, closer and closer!
I stumbled, screaming, then running again. I might have been a golden-pelted tabuk, but I was a girl!
The scream of the bird deafened me and its wings broke like thunder about my ears.
The shadow streaked past me.
The leather loop dropped about my body. In an instant it had jerked tight, pinning my arms helplessly to my sides, and I felt my body, my back almost broken, jerked from the grass. The grass rushed swiftly past below me, and I could not touch it with my feet, and then it fled from me, dropping way, and then suddenly, in the rushing air, as I twisted and turned, buffeted in the blasts of wind, a prisoner of the forces, the physics, of the braided leather rope and the accelerations and attitudes, it seemed the sky was below me and the grass overhead, and then I lost my breath, as the tarn began to climb, and I gasped, the grass and the sky, and the horizon, now spinning, and I screamed, crying out, my arms pinned, my hands helpless, unable to hold the rope, and I felt it slip an inch on my body, and I saw the earth now below, so far below, and the Ka-la-na thicket in the distance, like a patch of foliage on a lawn, and I swung, wildly, helplessly, the captive of that taut, slender leather strand by which I was bound, forty feet below the tarn, now hundreds of feet above the earth below me.
The rope slipped another quarter of an inch on my body, and I screamed! Then, the rope, pressing itself cruelly into my arms and body, lodged itself firmly.
It slipped no more.
I was effectively imprisoned by the weight of my own body. I feared only that the rope might break.
The tarn then began to wheel, and soar, and I swung below it, dangling and bound, hundreds of feet above the grasses below. It was turning back toward the Ka-la-na thicket, now remote in the distance, far below.
I felt myself being pulled, foot by foot, upward. I felt the rope press even more cruelly into my body, and I felt myself, foot by foot, lifted. My hands felt so helpless. I wanted to clutch the rope, to hold it! But I could not. Then, looking up, I saw the great talons of the tarn, held in against its body, above me. They were huge, curved and sharp.
I felt my body dragged against the side of the bird, and then I felt my shoulder rub against the metal and leather of the saddle, and a man's leg.
Then he held me in his arms. I could not move, so terrified was I.
I saw his eyes, through the apertures in his helmet. They seemed amused. I looked away.
He laughed.
It was a great, raw laugh, that of a tarnsman. I shuddered.
He removed the tarn rope from my body. On the saddle before him, facing him, I clung about his neck, terrified that I might fall. He coiled the tarn rope, and fastened it at the side of the saddle.
He then removed his tarn knife from his belt.
I felt the knife between the camisk and the binding fiber that belted it on my body. There was a movement of the knife and the binding fiber whipped from my body and, in the rushing wind, the camisk began to tug, snapping away from me, and then it was high, about my throat, pulling at my neck, flapping and snapping. He lifted it over my head and it flew behind the tarn. I felt against my body his leather, the buckle of his tarn belt. My cheek lay against the metal of his helmet. My hair streaked with the wind.
With his two hands he disengaged my arms from his neck.
"Lie before me, on your back," he said, "and cross your wrists and ankles." Terribly afraid of falling, I did so. He bent across my body and I felt my crossed wrists lashed to a saddle ring. He then bent to the other side and, in moments, I felt my crossed ankles lashed to another ring.
I lay there on my back before him, my body a bow, bound helplessly across his saddle.
He slapped my belly twice.
He then laughed another great laugh, that great raw laugh, that of a tarnsman, who has his prize bound helpless before him.
I cursed my misfortune, that I had been driven from the thicket when a tarnsman had been in the sky!
I pulled at my bound wrists, and ankles, fastened to the rings.
I turned my head to one side and wept.
I had again fallen captive.
What an incredible misfortune that I had been driven from the thicket just at the moment when a tarnsman had been in the sky!
I then became aware that the tarn was circling, and descending.
It was hard to breathe. I could see little but the sky, and the clouds. Then, with a jolt to my back, and with a scattering of dust and a snapping of wings, the tarn alit.
I became aware, as well as I could see, that we stood in the midst of a clearing in a peasant village. I could see, my head hanging down, in the distance a great thicket of Ka-la-na. Peasants were crowding about. Turning my head to one side, I could see men with spears and flails, in peasant tunics. Women and children, too, in the dusty square crowded about. I heard some clanging of pans. I saw sticks in the hands of some of the children.
"I see you have her, Warrior," said a large peasant, bearded, in a rough tunic of rep cloth.
I trembled.
"You flushed her well into the field," said the warrior. "My thanks." I groaned in misery.
"It is little enough for the many services you have rendered us," said the man. "She stole meat from us last night," said a man.
"Yes," said another, "and before that, the night before, from the village of Rorus."
"Give her to us, Warrior," said a man, "for a quarter of an Ahn, for a switching."
The warrior laughed. I trembled.
"There are men of Rorus here, too," said the man. "They, too, would like to punish her. Give her to us for a quarter of an Ahn, that we may switch her." Bound, I trembled.
"Let us switch her," cried the women and the children. "Let us switch her!" Upside down, fastened in the straps, I shook with fear.
"What is the cost of the meat?" inquired the warrior.
The people were silent.
From a pouch he threw a coin to a man of the village, and another to another man, doubtless one of the other village, called Rorus.
"Thank you, Warrior," they cried. "Our thanks!"
"Her first beating," said the warrior, in his strong voice, "is mine to bestow!" There was much laughter. I pulled helplessly at the straps.
"I wish you well!" they cried.
I felt the one-strap of the tarn harness jerk tight across my body, and suddenly, taking my breath away, the great bird screamed and began to beat its wings, and the saddle pressed up against my back, and I, upside down, saw the conical huts of the peasants drop away below us, and the bird, stroke by violent, majestic stroke, its head forward, was climbing toward the clouds.
* * *
The tarn streaked through the skies. I could fell the wind on my body. I lay bound over the saddle. My hair fled back in the wind, across his left thigh. I could scarcely move my wrists and ankles. He had lashed them securely. He was incredibly strong. Never before, even in the hut, had I been tied more tightly, more helplessly. I did not know where we were going, or even in what direction we were flying. I knew only that I, Elinor Brinton, a captured girl, was being carried helplessly, cruelly bound, tightly and uncompromisingly secured, into slavery.
It is now clear to me that we were flying southeastward.
Shortly after we had attained the skies, and he had set his direction, he turned me on my flank, facing him, and, with the fingers of his right hand, fingered my brand. "Only a Kajira," he said. Then, with the palm of his hand he thrust me back on my back.
In a moment or two, he reached down and took my hair, lifting my head, painfully, and turning it from side to side. "Your e
ars are pierced," he said. Then he dropped my head back against the side of the saddle.
I groaned, helplessly.
The tarn streaked on.
Once, he said to me, "We are crossing the Vosk."
I knew then we were within the territory of Ar, and must be high over the Margin of Desolation, a barren area, now recovering itself, which, years ago, had been cleared and devastated, that the northern fields of Ar by such a natural barrier, by such a wall of hunger and thirst, might be protected, presumably from invasion from the north or, more likely, from the incursions of Vosk pirates. In the reign of Marlenus, prior to his exile, and later, after his restoration, the Margin of Desolation had been deliberately left untended, that it might recover. Marlenus had set a swift fleet of light, Vosk galleys to clear the river waters adjoining his Ubarate of pirates. They had been successful, or muchly so. Seldom did Vosk pirates ply their trade where the Vosk bordered the regions of Ar. Other cities, to the north, of course, looked with apprehension on Marlenus' permitting the Margin of Desolation to recover its fertility and shade. He may have been only intending to extend the arable lands of Ar. On the other hand, under Marlenus, it became clear that Ar no longer feared for her borders. Also, the ambition of Marlenus, the Ubar of Ar, said to be the Ubar of Ubars, was well known. If it was now possible, or soon would be possible, to bring a land army easily southward to Ar, once the Vosk was traversed, by the same token, it would be similarly possible for Ar to bring, swiftly a considerable force of men northward, to the very shore of the Vosk. Of tradition, the northern shore of the Vosk was disputed by various cities. Ar, among others, had mde her claims.
Ahn after Ahn, the tarn flew.
He did not unbind me to feed me.
"Open your mouth," he said.
He thrust yellow Sa-Tarna bread into my mouth. I chewed the bread and, with difficulty, swallowed it. He then, with his tarn knife, from a piece of raw bosk meat, cut four small pieces of meat, which he placed in my mouth. "Feed," he said. I chewed the meat, eyes closed, swallowing it. "Drink," he said. He thrust the horn nozzle of a leather bota of water between my teeth. I almost choked. He withdrew the nozzle and capped the bota, replacing it in his saddle pack. I closed my eyes, miserable. I had been fed and watered.