by John Norman
The gaunt man, in the mask, turned away from the girl bound in the moonlight, tied over the altar, and pulled Hamilton behind him, making his way across the furrows, to the grass on the other side of the fields.
The girl on the altar was not a despised person, or a lowly one, saving that she was female, and thus fit for sacrifice. She was the prize of the village. Only the most beautiful, the highest born, would be dared to be offered to the moon or the gods.
Hamilton knew, with mixed feelings, that she was safe from such a fate. She, a despised slave, would not be deemed fit for such sacrifice.
On the other side of the fields, the gaunt man thrust Hamilton down to her belly in the grass, and then knelt across her legs. Even if she cried out she was too far from the village to be heard. She felt the man's fingers fumbling at the small of her back, in the moonlight undoing the knots. He did not cut the thongs. She realized then that he would, when finished, replace the wooden device. It would be as though nothing had happened. She wondered how often he would come for her, ordering her from the kennel, in the darkness. She lay on her belly, her cheek on the grass; she clutched at the stalks of grass with her small hands; she felt the knots undone; with his fingers he pulled at the device; she felt it slip free. He rolled her on her back; she, opened, breasts, belly, face bared, an exposed slave, looked up at him; he crouched over her; the moonlight streamed down upon her slave nudity; the bronze mask, horned, hideously painted, leaned toward her. She screamed; the body fell forward, struck with great force, the mask lost in the grass.
Hamilton scrambled to a position half crouching, half kneeling, her hands on the grass. Then she knelt, aghast, covering her body as best she could with her hands.
The young man was half crouched down, his hands still on the handle of the bronze ax, the head of the ax buried in the skull and brain of the tall, gaunt man.
Then, with his foot, pressing, and pulling upward, he freed the ax. He stood there, looking at Hamilton.
He was white-faced.
He turned the body on its back. The sightless eyes stared like glass at the moon. The face, Hamilton saw, was mediocre, but ugly; there was something sly about it; without the mask, it seemed not so much forbidding and powerful, as sly and weak, mediocre and vicious. It was the face of a man who had found a way to live, but not by hunting, not by digging.
Hamilton cried out. Two figures emerged from the darkness. Even in the darkness she knew with what sort of men they dealt. They had appeared as if from nowhere, lithe, silent, swift, powerful, menacingly purposive, armed. "Run!" she cried to the young man. "Run!" The strangers had appeared from downwind. They did not speak. The young man, so foolish, lifted the ax. "They are men!" she wept. "You are a boy! Run! Run!" But he was determined to defend her. "Run!" she cried. "Run!" She watched him struck to his knees, and then to his belly. He lay, his head broken, in the grass. "No," she wept. She was scarcely conscious of the leather strap being tied about her throat. She saw the head of a weasel tied at the belt of the man who secured her. By the strap, his fist six inches from her neck, half choking, she was jerked to her feet. In the distance, across the barley fields, she saw the sky glowing; the compound was being fired. She could see, here and there, a tiny figure, dark against the flames, running. The two men made their way across the barley fields; Hamilton, given some two feet of leash, was pulled behind them. On the other side of the field, they saw some two or three villagers running, but none successfully fled their pursuers; two, older women, were struck down before they reached the fields; the other, a man, reached the edge of the fields; it was there where, from behind, the ax, with its head of stone, lashed to the yard-long handle, caught him. Another hunter, carrying a torch, came behind them. Another appeared to Hamilton's left, he, too, with a torch. They dipped the torch to the young barley. Hamilton's captors made directly for the stone altar in the center of the field. They had well reconnoitered the area. Their strike had been well planned. The barley now, at two edges of the field, was blazing. Hamilton had little doubt that the Dirt People were encircled, and that the circle, like the strings on a trap, was now, the first strike made, to scatter the villagers and destroy the center of their strength, drawing shut. Hamilton's captors stopped beside the stone altar. They looked down on the girl, on her back, arched across the stone, stripped, tied, on the helpless, virginal delicacies of her body, with the relish of hunters. About them the barley blazed. The girl, bound, looked at them wildly, piteously. Then, to Hamilton's amazement the virgin, the prize of the village, the intended sacrifice, bound on the altar, her eyes imploring, lifted her hips to Hamilton's captors. They regarded her eyes, desperate, the sweet, delicate, supplicatory arch of her body. Her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be freed of the stone; her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be permitted to serve them on any terms which they might please. One of them lifted his stone ax, as though to crush her face against the stone. She writhed, screaming, in the light of the flaming barley; he held the ax poised, and grinned, then lowered it; she almost fainted; then, again, desperately, eyes piteous, whimpering, she lifted her hips, begging, to them. They laughed. Each, in turn, swiftly, brutally, took her. She threw her head back, screaming with agony and elation; she was jolted viciously, mercilessly, in the bonds; when they had taken their sport, and blood lay on her thighs and the stone, her head, and her shoulders, were back, hanging over the edge of the stone. Flames leapt about the altar. The girl, in her bonds, looked at them, turning her head piteously; were they pleased enough with her? To her joy a thong was knotted about her neck and, with the sacrificial knife, she was cut free of the altar. She was dragged through the flaming barley on her tether, beside Hamilton; she laughed with pleasure; she was alive; she, naked, leather on her throat, regarded Hamilton, unashamed, her face transfused with a brazen joy; she again laughed, putting her head back, screaming with pleasure; she was alive, alive!
The two captors, with their captives, left the flaming fields, approaching the compound.
A man, in torn woolen tunic, fled toward them. A hunter seemed to rise from the ground before him. He, with a sweeping, horizontal blow of his ax, caught the running figure in the gut; the man stopped, bent over, retching, unable to move; then the ax fell again, striking him down. A woman's scream came from the compound. The man who had struck the running figure walked over to greet the captors. They spoke, while more screaming came from the burning compound. A sheep, bleating, ran past. The leashes of Hamilton and the girl cut from the altar were tied together, forming a single leash with double collar. This the man who had struck the running figure took in his fist, he subordinate to the two others, holding it in the center. The three men then approached the compound, the two captors in the lead, he who had struck the running man a step behind, holding the leash of the two female captives, naked.
The stockade, and the huts within, were burning. Almost at the gate, two more of the Dirt People fled outward. One was a woman, who was struck down from behind by a hunter within. She reeled against the palings, the back of her head bloodied, and stumbled into the darkness and fell. The second was a man. The first captor tripped him, and he rolled sprawling in the dirt; as he tried to climb to his feet the ax of the second captor struck him frontally, and he fell heavily, forward, into the dirt. Four sheep, bleating in terror, one with flaming fleece, hurried out of the compound.
Hamilton and the girl, her leash-mate, were dragged within the compound.
On a stake in the compound was the head of he who had been the leader of the Dirt People.
The gate was opened, widely. The work of the men of the Weasel People had been easier than they had anticipated, for the tall, gaunt man, in taking Hamilton from the compound, had left it open, that he might return silently. Yet this would, Hamilton knew, have made little difference. The men of the Weasel People would have, without great difficulty, scaled the palisade. A loop hurled over a pointed log and a swift climb, feet against the logs, would have brought them to the top, whence they might hav
e leaped down to the dirt within. The palisade was effective against animals; it was not effective against men.
Hamilton turned her head away as she saw an older woman struck to the dirt.
From a hut, half burning, two men of the Weasel People dragged forth a man, throwing him to the dirt before them, then striking him six times with their axes. The flint of the axes of the men of the Weasel People, and their faces, sweaty, exhilarated, glowed in the reflection of the flames. Inside the compound it was almost as light as day, reminding Hamilton of the electric lights of the compound in Rhodesia, where she had been held captive. About the compound, in the dirt, lay several bodies, bloodied, their heads broken open. Before one wall four of the younger women of the Dirt People stood, huddled together; they were separated and thrust back against the wall; their clothing Was cut from them; shuddering, they were inspected, closely, and felt; the leader of the Weasel People, the heavily built, bearded man, pointed to two of the women; immediately they were turned about, their hands tied behind their backs, and a rope put on their necks; they were dragged across the compound, to the post at which Hamilton, several days before, had been tied and whipped with switches; they were tied by their necks to this post; the leader turned his back on the other two women, who were not comely; Hamilton and the girl with her screamed with horror; then they turned away. From a storage pit, where she had hidden herself in the barley, another girl, caught in the grain, was forced to climb the ladder to the surface of the compound. She was stripped and bloody; there was grain on her body, stuck to the blood, and caught in her hair. The hunter who had found her followed her up the ladder. When she stood on the surface of the compound, she stood before the leader of the Weasel People. Proudly she threw back her head, shaking her hair, unafraid. He said a word and, as she stared angrily ahead, her hands were tied behind her back and then she was thrust, stumbling, to the post, where she, too, was fastened to it by the neck.
Suddenly Hamilton remembered Gunther, in the camp of the Weasel People, remarking to her that he surmised that such groups, so small, so isolated, which had initiated at this early date a form of herding, of agriculture, of metalwork, would not survive. His words, for the first time, now seemed weighty to her, rich with an insidious import she had not at first understood. Why had he brought her here? Why had he sold her to the Dirt People? It had puzzled her, for she had suspected, given the contempt in which he held her, his irritation with her intelligence, his scorn for her vulnerabilities, the profound, desperate needs of her female sexuality, which could turn her into a helpless slave in a man's arms, that he would have kept her for himself, a despised love captive it might have pleased him, from time to time, to abuse and use for his pleasure; surely he would not have soon relinquished his title to the helpless, delicious slave who had once been the prim, reserved, formal, proud Dr. Brenda Hamilton? No, it was his intention to have her back, and he had never intended for the Dirt People to keep her. She had been brought here for another reason, to give him an opportunity to take reconnaissance of the compound of the Dirt People; under the pretext of selling two females he had studied the compound, its men, their numbers, the weapons, the land; oh, it had amused him, doubtless, to sell her as a nude slave, the once proud Dr. Hamilton, but that, pleasing though it might have been to him, had not satisfied the full intention of his plan; her sale had been a pretext, a diversion, to permit himself access to the compound and conduct the inquiries of his espionage. Hamilton knew then that she had been a dupe in the plans of the brilliant Gunther; she wondered if, in the stresses of the temporal translation, in his accession to power among the men of the Weasel People, in his finding himself, with his rifle, almost a god in this wild country, he had gone insane. She recalled the throne on which he had seated himself, the robe of bearskin he had worn about his shoulders. In Rhodesia Gunther had been hard, brilliant, efficient, and, even then his genuis had bordered on the fine line that separates incomparable intellect from madness, but he had been, clearly, sane; here, in this ancient, primitive time and country, she feared he had crossed the border into madness; what had the Dirt People done to him; had he seen fit to ventilate on them his hatred of diggers, his esteem of hunters; she recalled the violence, the force, with which, in Rhodesia he had once spoken to her of such things; the hunters are dead, he had said; but perhaps they are not dead, but only sleeping, he had suggested; perhaps they will come again; perhaps they will hunt again, he had seemed to feel, building ships and voyaging to stars, taking up again the hunt, that which gave meaning to man. But how, wondered Hamilton, could the hunters waken if they had not slept; one cannot attack the stars with ships of stone, and poles and logs; the world must change a thousand times before the fleets of steel ships could be built, before they could be launched for the systems of distant suns. It would be a contest between the hearth and the mountains, between barley and the call of Tau Geti and Epsilon Eridani, Arcturus and the clouds of Andromeda. Turn their eyes to the stars, had said Herjellsen, who was mad, mad. Hamilton could do nothing. And Gunther, she feared, had gone mad, too. It was wrong to kill the Dirt People. They had not harmed him. The Men would not have injured them, though they would, in all likelihood, have avoided them, or, if they wished, taken their stock, or one or two of their women. The Weasel People, she recalled, fed on human flesh. She wondered if Gunther, in his hatred for diggers, had gone insane.
She looked up, startled. The leader of the Weasel People was looking upon her and the other girl. Her leash-mate stood very straight, frightened; she arched her tiny, virginal breasts toward the bearded beast who looked upon her; she sucked in her belly, and put her head back; she trembled; he looked upon her face and figure; she was white and small before him; he was large and hairy, and darkened by the sun; would he find her pleasing; if he did not she knew she would be killed, struck down by the heavy axes; he turned from her, stopping before Hamilton; he looked closely at her face, squinting, seeing that it was truly her; he took her by the head and pulled it down, looking at it, running his hand over the head; it was still cut and scraped, from the first time it had been shaved; only this morning had the older women shaved it again; it had not been their intention to let Hamilton soon forget her shame; furthermore, a vital girl, with long hair and bared legs, might trouble their men; much less would they be troubled, or should they be troubled, by a girl with shaved head, heavily and grossly clad, and kept busy constantly, kept exhausted and bent with labor, with digging and the carrying of water. She had had, since the first day, very little to do with the men. Women had been, constantly, her merciless supervisors. Often, indeed, even the young girl, now her leash-mate, had been in charge of her labors. How proud the young girl had been. Now she was stripped and tied by the neck, only a slave girl, naked, trying desperately to stand and display herself in a way that would please the brute who had led the attack on her village. Hamilton's head was released; she straightened; she was sure that, even in spite of her shaved head, she would not be killed; she looked into the leader's eyes. Gunther, she was sure, would have told him to bring her back. The leader, with a grunt, gestured to the man who held the common leash. Hamilton's leash-mate uttered a tiny, joyful cry. They were pulled stumbling to the post. There were three other girls there, each with her hands tied behind her back, each tied by the neck to the post. The man who held Hamilton's leash, that shared by the raped, virginal beauty, did not tie their hands behind them. He forced Hamilton, rather, to walk once completely about the post, stepping over the ropes of the other tethered women; the leash was thus looped about the post; then, pulling the loop out from the post, he forced Hamilton to duck beneath it and then step over it, and draw it tight; then, having used Hamilton's body to tie the loop about the post, he bade them kneel; they did so.
The roof of one of the huts tumbled in, burning. The men of the Weasel People busied themselves gathering the loot of their raid; they sacked barley, gathered bowls, fetched axes and implements of bronze; one of them overturned a vat of sourish beer; another f
ell to his knees and sniffed at it; Hamilton's heart leaped; there was another vat; but the leader, striking it with his ax, puzzled, broke it open, and it, too, spilled onto the earth, mixing with blood; Hamilton saw the knotted thong on the young girl's throat; she could not see the knot on her own; "Make no sound," said Hamilton, in the language of the Dirt People. The girl looked at her with horror. She shook her head negatively. Hamilton crept to her and began to pick at the knot on her throat. "No," whispered the girl, fearfully, and struck Hamilton away. Hamilton tore at her own knot, but could not see to undo it. The men, with bowls, were now dipping into the broken vat, toward its bottom, below its rupture, from the leader's ax. The leader did not stop them. One of the men spit out the fluid in disgust. The others laughed. Hamilton, desperate, looked at the open gate, and then at the young girl. Then she seized her by the throat, choking her, putting her to her back; the young girl's eyes were wild; "Make no sound," said Hamilton. Then she took her hands from the frightened girl's throat and untied the knot; she then, with the free end, slipped the knot about the post free. The men at the beer laughed. Another had tried it, and swallowed it. He looked puzzled, then smiled. The leader then, gruffly, commanding a bowl, partook. He drank it down, all of it, and grinned. Hamilton slipped from the compound.