Captive of Gor

by John Norman

  "It was only a wild tarn," I told her.

  "I hope that that is true," she said.

  Together, at the edge of the thicket, we ate the remains of our meal, which I had carried.

  We wiped our hands on the grass, and threw the bones into the brush.

  "Look!" whispered Ute.

  Through the brush, some two hundred yards away, moving in the darkness, we saw two torches.

  "Men," moaned Ute. "Men!"

  From the thicket, running together, we fled southwestward.

  By dawn we came to another large stand of Ka-la-na, in which we, wearily, concealed ourselves.

  * * * *

  Four days later, in yet another thicket, one afternoon, Ute requested that I set one of our snares on a small game trail we had found earlier.

  We had heard nothing more of pursuit. We had seen no more torches, following us in the night.

  We had again escaped.

  Swinging the loop of binding fiber, I walked along the trail.

  There were small birds about, and I saw a scurrying brush urt, flowers, even a lovely, yellowish tabuk fawn. I crossed two tiny streams.

  Suddenly I stopped, terrified.

  I heard the sound of a man's voice. I slipped from the soft, gentle, green path between the trees and brush, and fell to my stomach, concealed among the brush and grasses.

  They were not coming along the trail.

  I inched forward, on my elbows and stomach, and then, through a tiny parting in brush, saw them.

  My heart almost stopped.

  They were in a small clearing. There were two tarns hobbled nearby. The men had made no fire. They were clad in leather, and armed. They were warriors, mercenaries. They seemed rough, cruel men. I recognized them. I had seen them as long ago as Targo's compound north of Laura. They were hirelings of Haakon of Skjern, his men.

  "She is somewhere in here," one of the men told the other.

  "If we had hunting sleen," said the other, "and could find her trail, we would have her in our bracelets before dusk."

  "I hope she is red silk," said the other.

  "If she is not when we apprehend her," said the other, "by the time we turn her over to Haakon she will be of the reddest of silks."

  "Haakon might not be pleased," said the other.

  The first laughed. "Haakon does not know which girl is red silk and which is white silk."

  "That is true," grinned the other.

  "Besides," pointed out the first, "do you really think Haakon expects us to return white-silk girls to his chain?"

  "Of course not," laughed the second, slapping his knee. "Of course not!"

  "This one has led us a merry chase indeed," said the first man, grimly. "We will make her pay us back well for our time and trouble."

  "But what if we do not catch her?" asked the second.

  "She is indeed elusive," said the first man, "but we will catch her."

  Lying on my stomach in the grass, listening, I moaned inwardly.

  "She seems intelligent," said the second.

  "Yet," pointed out the first, "we saw her fire."

  "True," said the second, "though she seems clever, though she seems intelligent, though she has well eluded us this far, she yet built a fire."

  The first smiled. "Any girl foolish enough to build a fire," he said, "will, sooner or later, be caught."

  "What is our plan?" asked the second.

  "We know that she had a fire," said the first. "One supposes she was cooking. If she was cooking, she must have caught birds or meat."

  "At the edge of a thicket to the northeast, days ago," said the second man, "we found the bones of brush urts!"

  "Yes," said the first man, "and, nearby, in this thicket, there is a small game trail."

  "It is hard to hunt in a Ka-la-na thicket," said the second man.

  "More importantly," said the first man, "brush urts tend to use such trails."

  "Yes!" said the second.

  "Sooner or later, it seems likely, does it not," asked the first, "that she will come to the trail, to hunt, or set a snare, or see if one is sprung."

  "There may be other trails," pointed out the second man.

  "If we do not catch her now," said the first man, spreading his hands, "we will catch her tomorrow or the day after."

  On my stomach, carefully, silently, I began to back away. When I was several yards away, silently, bending over, noiselessly, I slipped away.

  One thought was foremost in my mind. That I must find and warn Ute, that we might escape.

  But then I stopped.

  I crawled into some brush, frightened. They had always spoken only of "she." As far as they knew, there was but one girl to be caught.

  I shook my head. No, I must not think such thoughts.

  But the men frightened me. They were rough, cruel men, mercenaries, ruthless. I could not permit Elinor Brinton, the sensitive girl of Earth, to fall into the hands of such hardened brutes. I had heard them talk of what they would do to a girl, even though she might be white silk!

  Ute had been a slave before.

  No, I told myself, no! I must not think such thoughts.

  I found myself getting up and, calmly, walking back toward our camp.

  The men knew of only one girl. They thought there was only one of us.

  I must not think such thoughts, I told myself.

  Ute and I must escape.

  I smiled.

  Ute had thought she was my leader. She had dared to give me orders. She had commanded me, Elinor Brinton, though she was only an ignorant Gorean girl, had dared to act as the leader of a girl of Earth, and one such as I!

  She would learn better.

  No, I cried to myself, I must warn Ute! I must warn her!

  I was now nearing our camp, walking casually.

  I remembered clearly what the man had said. "If we do not catch her now," he had said, "we will catch her tomorrow, or the day after."

  They had pursued us for days. They would not give up the chase. They would have us.

  I smiled.

  Or at least one of us.

  Ute was stupid, she was ignorant, she was Gorean, she did not matter. She was a crude, simple girl. She made mistakes in speaking her own language. She did not have my fine mind, my sensitivity, my delicate nature, my cleverness. She was, I reminded myself, of low caste. She was less, far less, than I.

  Besides, she had dared to treat me as her inferior, ordering me about, instructing me. I hated her! Pretty little Ute, whom men found so desirable! I hated her! I was more beautiful than she. Ute had been slave before. She could be slave again! I remembered she had once thonged me by the nose ring. I hated her. We would find out who was more clever. I hated her!

  I threw the piece of binding fiber, which I had been carrying for the snare, which I had not set, into the brush.

  "Greetings, Ute," said I, smiling.

  "Tal, El-in-or," smiled Ute, looking up from her work. She was trying, with a pointed stick, to round a pit in a new board for a new fire drill. Usually, in our night journeys, we carried with us only the precious binding fiber. Accordingly, Ute often constructed a new drill.

  "Oh, Ute," I said. "I set the snare far down the game trail. And as I was going away, I heard it spring and heard an animal."

  "Good," said Ute. "What was it?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I looked. I had not seen one like it before. It is some kind of brush urt, I think. It is very ugly."

  "Why didn't you bring it back with you?" she asked.

  "I did not want to touch it," I said.

  "Oh, El-in-or!" laughed Ute. "You are so foolish!"

  "Please get it, Ute," I begged. "I do not want to touch it. It is so ugly!"

  "All right," said Ute. "I will get it." She returned to her work.

  I cast a frightened glance backward, down the trail. "Hadn't you better hurry?" I asked.

  "Why?" asked Ute.

  "Might someone not find the snare?" I said.

&n
bsp; Ute looked at me. "Yes," she said. "We must take it down quickly." She put aside her work and stood up.

  "Show me where you put it," said Ute, starting off.

  "No!" I cried.

  She turned and looked at me.

  "You can't miss it," I told her. "It is to the left. You could not miss it."

  "All right," said Ute, and left the camp. My heart was pounding.

  Stealthily, at a distance, I followed her. A short distance from the camp, I knelt down and picked up a heavy rock.

  I hid in the brush beside the trail, clutching the rock.

  Suddenly, some hundred yards away, I heard a man's shout.

  My heart leaped. They had taken her!

  But then I heard the shouts of another man, and then of both, and a crashing through brush.

  To my dismay, terrified, frantic, her eyes wide, hands extended, fleet as a tabuk, Ute was fleeing back down the trail.

  "El-in-or," she cried. "Slavers! Run!"

  "I know," I said.

  She looked at me, startled.

  I struck her suddenly in the side of the head with the stone.

  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. Then 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 would 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 was a friend of Ute, 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 Ute, 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 toward 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 one 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, the 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 toward 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 or 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 kettles and 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 w
as 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 stopped, 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 away, 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 crazily, first one above, then the other, and the horizon turning, 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.