by John Norman
"How did you find her?" asked the leader of his men.
There were shouts of pleasure. Again Tina looked up, piteously, at the leader.
"We shall take you with us, Slave," said the leader.
Tina's eyes shone. "Thank you, Master!" she breathed.
"Your duties will be heavy," he told her. "You will please us when it is our wish, and when it is not our wish, you will prepare food for slaves, which you will serve to them."
"Very well, Master," said Tina.
"Do you regard yourself as fortunate?" asked their leader.
"Of course, Master," she said.
"You served us with great zeal," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"We would have taken you with us," said he, "even if you had not served us as pleasantly as you did."
"You tricked me!" she cried.
"Do you know who my captain is?" he inquired.
"No," she said, apprehensively.
"It is Sarus of Tyros," he said.
"No!" she cried out in horror.
"Yes," he laughed. "And you will be returned to him in one or two days."
She tried to leap to her feet and flee, but he caught her by the hair, and threw her to one of his men.
"Bind the slave," he said.
Tina was thrown to her stomach in the sand, and bound hand and foot.
She was then held by the arms before their leader.
"You are a runaway slave girl," he said. "I do not envy you."
She shuddered.
"Is this the first time you have attempted to escape?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
"Perhaps then," said he, "you will not be hamstrung. Perhaps then you will only be lashed."
Tina moaned.
"Look forward to your lashing," he said.
Tina regarded him with horror.
"Throw her in the boat," he said.
The bound slave girl was thrown rudely into the boat.
"To the ship," said the leader.
Several of the men thrust the longboat back out into the water. Then they, with the leader, lifted themselves into the boat.
As the longboat pulled away, moving back toward the Rhoda and Tesephone, it passed a log, floating in the water, drifting back to shore.
I saw the single lantern on the longboat growing smaller in the distance.
I was not dissatisfied.
I slipped ashore, thrusting the log onto the sand, some two hundred yards away, among large rocks, concealed from the light of the beacon.
Tina had one night, perhaps two, to do her work.
From the shadows of the forest I observed the lanterns. The longboat reached the Rhoda. Its lantern was then extinguished. Then the two lanterns, too, both on the Rhoda, the Tesephone, dark, lying off her starboard bow, were extinguished.
Tonight both ships would withdraw a pasang or two from shore. There they would lie to until morning. It would not be wise to coast a strange shore at night. Further I had heard they did not expect to make contact with Sarus for another day or two. Accordingly they were not hurried. Besides, I expected that tonight there would be some cause for celebration on the two ships, and that they might be drawn together by lines. They had been long at sea, doubtless not putting into land, save for supplies and water, and that in lonely places. It was long that the men of the Rhoda and Tesephone had been at sea. How long was it since they had held the naked, perfumed, collared, responding body of a female slave in their arms? Since the rough port of Laura? Since semi-civilized Lydius, at the mouth of the Laurius? How long would it have been since they had witnessed the swaying body of a chained girl in a paga tavern, perhaps even Ilene in the tavern of Hesius in Laura, or, say, one of the luscious, collared slaves of culturally mixed Lydius, at the mouth of the Laurius, perhaps one of the beauties of the Lydian tavern keeper, Sarpedon, perhaps the wench called Tana, once Elizabeth Cardwell of Earth, now only a belled paga slave. The men would be desperate to hold the softness of a naked woman in their arms, to feel her touch, the caress of her lips and tongue, to hear her cry out their manhood and her femaleness in a single wild cry of pleasure. The men had been long at sea. I had thrown Tina among them.
She knew what she must do.
19
The Stockade of Sarus of Tyros
"Who goes there!" challenged the guard.
I stood in the darkness, on the beach, clad in the yellow of Tyros.
His spear, held in two hands, faced me.
"I am your enemy," I told him. "Summon Sarus. I would speak with him."
"Do not move!" he said.
"If I move," I told him, "it will be to kill you. Summon Sarus. I would speak with him."
The guard took a step backward.
"Captain!" he cried. "Captain!"
We stood some hundred yards from the palisade erected by the men of Tyros, south of it, on the beach.
From where I stood I could feel the heat of Sarus' great beacon.
It was now the night following that on which I had, by my will, forced Tina to deliver herself to the men of the Rhoda and Tesephone.
I saw men of Tyros pouring from the palisade, and, too, some of the women of Hura.
Many of them took up positions about the palisade; others scouted the beach to the north, and the nearby forest edges. They were wary. It was wise for them to be so.
I could see a group of five men, one with a torch, making their way toward me across the beach.
The palisade was no longer a rude semicircle, fronted by animal fires. It had now been closed. There was even a rough gate, hung on rope hinges, which was now open.
The group of five men picked their way across the stones toward me. They carried weapons. Sarus was among them. Men now streamed past me, to scout the beach to the south.
Today, concealed in the forest, I had seen men cutting more logs. These they trimmed, and dragged to the sand between the stockade and the shore. With ropes and chains they had begun to fasten them together. Obviously Sarus was growing impatient for the Rhoda and Tesephone. Perhaps he thought them overdue. As the men had worked on these logs, fastening them into rafts, slaves, Marlenus and the others, male and female, had been forced to stand between the rafts and the forest.
There was little opportunity to use the great bow, either against the stockade or to prevent the building of the rafts. I could have slain some men cutting in the forest, but little would have been accomplished. I would have informed them that they again stood in danger, which I did not wish them to know. Further, they might then have shielded their work with slaves, or, perhaps, used selected wood from the front of the palisade. The sea and the beach, with their openness, gave them protection. They could shield themselves, either with wood or slaves, from the forest. The most of them, though I could have made some kills, were now substantially safe from the great bow. I could not pin them inside the stockade without exposing myself, and doing so from the beach or shore, and then, of course, they might depart from the stockade secretly from the rear. I did not wish to expose myself on the beach, permitting them the cover of the forest. It would be too easy for them, after a time, to bring me within the range of their steel-leaved crossbows.
It had been my intention to permit Sarus to reach the sea.
I had anticipated, however, that he would make camp and wait for the appointed rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone.
I had not anticipated that he might not choose to keep this scheduled rendezvous.
I had apparently miscalculated.
Perhaps I had not understood the degree of terror which I had apparently, unwittingly, induced in my enemies.
Perhaps Sarus was unnerved, too, by the escape, the day before yesterday, of Cara and Tina.
This may have precipitated his decision.
Perhaps, too, Mira had informed him that he was stalked by hundreds of panther girls, claiming to have seen evidences of this in the trek. She would dare not reveal to him her capture and return, th
us making clear her role in the affair of the wine, but she might well convince him of what she believed, what she had mistakenly inferred from her experiences in the forest, while blindfolded, while being interrogated by Vinca. She need only have claimed to have glimpsed such women, following them, hunting them.
Perhaps Sarus was frightened that the stockade would be stormed.
For whatever reason, Sarus, it seemed, was determined soon, doubtless in the morning, to take his rafts south. It would be dangerous, and perhaps futile, to follow them under the cover of the forest. For one thing, I would have to pass exchange points. Further, if they kept slaves on the shoreward side of the rafts, as they would, and did not put into land to make camp, there was little that could be done. It was not unlikely that I would lose them.
I was bitter. We had missed the rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone by only a matter of hours.
There was little time to act. I was bitter.
"I am Sarus," said the long-boned man.
I saw a torch lifted higher, that they might better look upon my face.
I carried only my sword, in its sheath, and a short sleen knife, balanced.
"He is alone," said a man, reporting back from the beach to the south.
"Keep watch," said Sarus.
He was not shaved. He looked at me. He seemed a strong man, hard, a leader.
"You wear the yellow of Tyros," he said.
"I am not of Tyros," I told him.
"Of that I am sure," said Sarus.
"What are you doing here?" asked one of the men, crowding close.
I looked at Sarus. "I am your enemy," I said. "I would speak with you."
"The beach is clear to the north," said another man, coming up to Sarus.
"I found no one in the forest," said another. Two other men, too, stood with him.
The men of Tyros looked at one another.
"Shall we speak?" I asked.
Sarus looked at me. "Let us return to the stockade," he said.
"Excellent," I said.
Sarus turned to his men. "Return to the stockade!" he called. He regarded me. "We shall keep watch from within the stockade," he said. "We may not be easily surprised."
"Excellent," I said.
I led the way to the stockade, the men of Sarus falling into step beside me.
Before I entered the stockade I heard Sarus speak to two of his men. "Keep the beacon burning," he said. "Build it high."
I entered the stockade and looked about.
"It is not a bad stockade," I told him, "for having been swiftly built."
The gate swung shut behind me.
I must wait until the two men who tended the beacon returned to the interior.
"Do not stand close to me," I told two men of Tyros. They moved back a few feet.
Inside the stockade I was the immediate center of attention. I looked from face to face, particularly those of the men. Some seemed alert, swift. Others' hands seemed well fitted to the hilts of blades. I noted which pommels were worn. Two carried crossbows. I noted them.
"Do not press me closely," I told them.
I was the center of a circle. The women, too, of Hura, stood at the edge of the circle, among the men of Sarus. The women, who had seen me, long ago at the camp of Marlenus, did not recognize me. But Mira did. She stood there, behind two men of Tyros.
Her eyes were wide. Her hand was before her mouth. It was I to whom she had submitted herself in the forest. It was I who had used her, a mere slave, insolently, before returning her, with the drugged wine, to the camp of Sarus. I was her master. Had I come for her?
"I think I know him," said Hura, the tall girl, long-legged, with black hair, leader of the panther girls. She stood boldly before me, in the brief skins of the panthers, in her golden ornaments.
I drew her swiftly to me, and she cried out, frightened. I held her helplessly, and raped her lips with a kiss, an insolent kiss, such as a master might use to dismiss a slave girl, and then threw her from me, against the feet of the men of Tyros. The women of Hura gasped, and cried out with indignation. They screamed with rage. The men of Tyros were startled.
"Kill him!" screamed Hura, her dark hair before her eyes, crouching at the edge of the circle, to which, after my kiss, I had spurned her.
"Be silent, Woman," said Sarus.
Hura struggled to her feet, and swept her hair back from her face. She regarded me with rage. Her women, too, cried out with fury.
"Be silent," said Sarus.
Angrily, the panther girls, breathing heavily, eyes flashing, restrained themselves.
I gathered that Hura, and her girls, proud panther women, were not popular among the men.
Moreover, I gathered that they feared the men, as well as hated them.
Little love or respect was lost between them. They were strange allies, the men of Tyros, the women of Hura.
"I claim vengeance!" cried Hura.
Again, behind her, her girls shouted.
"Be silent," said Sarus, sharply, "or we will put you all in bracelets!"
The girls gasped, and were silent.
The mood of the men of Tyros toward them was not pleasant. They shrank back.
At a word from Sarus they might be enslaved, and would be then no different from the poor wenches, bound head to foot, lying behind them.
The slaves in the stockade, the twenty-two wenches behind the circle of the men of Tyros and the women of Hura, and beyond them, lying on their stomachs, chained, facing the back wall of the stockade, Marlenus and the twenty others, could know little or nothing of what was transpiring.
I did, however, as well as I could, note the positions of Sheera and Verna among the tied, prone slave girls.
I might have need of them.
"Entrance," called one of the two men who had been outside, adding fuel to the beacon fire.
The gate was opened and the two men were admitted. All the men of Sarus, then, were within the stockade.
The gate was shut again.
I was pleased to see the beam slid into place, thrust by two men, securing it.
There was no catwalk about the interior of the stockade.
A man of Tyros threw more wood on a fire inside the stockade, well illuminating the interior.
"I have heard," said Sarus, folding his arms, "that you would speak with me."
"That is true," I said.
I measured Sarus. He would be quick. He was intelligent. He was hard. His accent bespoke a low caste. He had doubtless risen through the ranks to a position of prominence, which, given the aristocracies of Tyros, was unusual. Family was important on the cliffed island, as, indeed it was, too, on the terraces of Cos. Island ubarates, with their relatively stable populations, over a period of generations, tend to develop concentrations of wealth and power among successful families, which wealth and power, first producing oligarchy, becomes gradually invested with the prestige of dynastic tradition, at which point, one supposes, one may fairly speak of aristocracy. Most Gorean cities are, in effect, governed by the influence, direct or indirect, of several important families. In the city of Ar, one of the great families was once the Hinrabians.
But Sarus did not owe his authority, his responsibility, to his family.
He had achieved it against great odds, on the isle of Tyros. He would be quite dangerous.
He reminded me a bit of Chenbar of Tyros, her Ubar, also of lowly origin. Perhaps it was to the influences of Chenbar, some years ago, that Sarus had been advanced. Chenbar, as far as I knew, lay chained in a dungeon of Port Kar. There had been much warfare in Tyros over the succession to the throne of the Ubar. Five families, with their followers, had fought for the medallion. I did not know, now, how things stood in Tyros.
I did know, however, that Sarus and his men had engaged in a well-organized mission to capture Marlenus of Ar and one called Bosk of Port Kar.
I found that of interest.
It seemed to me unusual that with the succession in doubt such an expedit
ion had been launched.
Then I knew what must be the case.
"I had not known," I said, "that Chenbar of Tyros had escaped."
Sarus looked at me, warily. "Men of Torvaldsland," he said. "They were not suspected. Their fees were large. With their axes they broke through to him, shattered the rings from the stones, and carried him safe to Tyros. Many men were killed. They escaped at night. An hour after his arrival on Tyros, the Rhoda, under my command, raised mast and dipped oars for Lydius."
"What was your mission?" I asked.
"It is not of your business," said Sarus.
"I note," I said, "that you have taken slaves."
"Some," said Sarus.
The escape of Chenbar would have taken place shortly after I had left the city.
"Who of Torvaldsland," I asked, "dared to free Chenbar of Tyros?"
"A madman," laughed Sarus. "Ivar Forkbeard."
"A madman?" I asked.
"Who else?" said Sarus. "Who but a madman would have attempted such work? Who but a madman could have succeeded in it?"
"His fees were large?" I asked.
"To be sure," said Sarus, wryly. "The weight of Chenbar in the sapphires of Schendi."
"His price," I said, "was high for one afflicted with madness."
"All those of Torvaldsland are mad," said Sarus. "They have no sense. They fear only that they will not die in war."
"I trust," I said, "that you, and men of Tyros, are less mad."
"It is my hope that that is true," smiled Sarus. Then his eyes grew hard. "Why have you come to this stockade? What is it that you wish?"
"Kill him," cried Hura.
Sarus paid her no attention.
"I have come to negotiate," I said.
"I do not understand," said Sarus.
I looked about, noting the position of the men, and the women of Hura, and where Sheera and Verna, hidden behind the feet of those at the circle, lay bound.
"It is my wish," I said, "that you surrender to me, without dispute, those whom you now hold as slave."
"I see now," smiled Sarus, "that Ivar Forkbeard, of Torvaldsland, was sane."
I shrugged.
"Do you understand what these slaves have cost us?" asked Sarus.
"I am sure their price was high," I granted.
"Kill him! Kill him!" cried certain of Hura's women.