Hunters of Gor (18 page)

She was sick from her wound, and loss of blood. She had fainted as I had carried

her. Now she was conscious, and sat, leaning against the tree, her eyes glazed,

regarding me.

I pulled down her gag, letting it hang about her neck.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Grenna,” she said.

“Where is the camp and dancing circle of Verna, the panther girl?” I asked.

She looked at me, sick, puzzled. “I do not know,” she whispered.

Something in the girl’s manner convinced me that she spoke the truth. I was not

much pleased.

This portion of the forest was supposedly the territory of Verna, and her band.

I gave the girl some food from my pouch. I gave her a swallow of water from the

flask at my belt.

“Are you not of Verna’s band?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Of whose band are you?” I asked.

“Of Hura’s,” said she.

“This portion of the forest,” I told her, “is the territory of Verna and her

band.”

“It will be ours,” she said.

I withheld the water flask.

“We have more than a hundred girls,” she said. “It will be ours.”

I gave her another swallow of water.

“It will be ours,” she said.

I was puzzled. Normally panther girls move and hunt in small bands. That there

should be more than a hundred of them in a single band, under a single leader,

seemed incredible.

I did not much understand this.

“You are a scout?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“How far are you in advance of your band?” I asked.

“Pasangs,” she said.

“What will be thought when you do not return to your band?” I asked.

“Who knows what to think?” she said. “Sometimes a girl does not come back.”

Her lips formed the word. I gave her more water. She had lost blood.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“Be silent,” I said.

It now seemed to me even more important to locate, as swiftly as possible,

Verna’s camp or its dancing circle.

Soon, perhaps within two or three days, more panther girls might be entering

this portion of the forests.

We must act quickly.

I looked at the sun. it was low now, sunk among the trees.

In another Ahn or two, it would be dark.

I wished to find Verna’s camp, if possible, before nightfall.

There was no time to carry this prisoner back to where Rim, and my men, and Arn,

and his men, waited for me. It would be dark before I could do so, and return.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

I took the gag, from where I had pulled it down about her throat, and refixed

it, securely.

I then reknotted the binding fiber from where it was fastened, behind the small

of her back, and also unknotted it, in front, from the chain of the slave

bracelets. I put the binding fiber in my belt. I then unlocked the left slave

bracelet.

“Climb,” I told her, indicating a nearby tree.

She stood, unsteadily. She shook her head. She was weak. She had lost blood.

“Climb,” I told her, “or I shall bracelet you on the ground.”

Slowly she climbed, branch by branch, I following her.

“Keep climbing,” I told her.

At last she was more than thirty feet from the ground. She was frightened.

“Edge out on the limb,” I told her, “and lie down upon it, your head to the

trunk of the tree.”

She hesitated.

“Do so!” I told her.

She lay, her back on the limb.

“Farther out,” I told her.

She edged, on her back, along the limb. Then she was more than five feet from

the trunk.

She shuddered.

“Let your arms hang free,” I said.

She did. The slave bracelets, one locked on her right wrist, dangled.

I then relocked her left wrist in the slave bracelets. Her wrists were now

locked under the branch and behind her. I then crossed her ankles and bound them

to the branch. Then, with another length of binding fiber, taken from my own

pouch, I bound her by the belly, tightly, to the branch.

She looked back at me, over her shoulder, fear in her eyes.

I climbed downward. The sleen is a burrowing animal. It seldom climbs. The

panther can climb, but it is accustomed to take its hunting scents from the

ground.

I expected the girl would be safe. If she were not, I remembered, as a Gorean,

that she had tried to kill me. If ought befell me, of course, it would not be

well for her. She was gagged, braceleted, and bound. I was confident that she

would wish me well in whatever enterprise I might be engaged. Though she was my

enemy and prisoner, her desires would be most fervid for my success.

The girl taken care of, I resumed my journey.

An Ahn before darkness I found the camp.

It was situated back from the bank of a small stream, one of the many tiny

tributaries of the Laurius which interlace the forest.

I eased myself upward into the branches of a tree, whence I might command a

better view.

It consisted of five huts, conical, of woven sapling and thatched, and was

surrounded by a small palisade of sharpened saplings. A rough gate, fastened

with vines, gave entrance into the camp. In the center of the camp there was a

cooking hole, banked with a circle of flat stones. On a wooden spit, set on

sticks, grease dropping into the fire and flaming, was a thigh of tabuk.

It smelled good. The smoke, in a thin line, trickled upward into the sky.

The thigh of tabuk was tended by a squatting panther girl, who, from time to

time, picked bits of meat from it and thrust them in her mouth. She sucked her

fingers clean. Over to one side another girl worked on a slave net, reworking

and reknotting the weighted cords.

Elsewhere two girls, sitting cross-legged, were playing a cat’s-cradle game,

matching one another’s intricate patterns with the twine. There were skillful.

This game is popular in the north, particularly in the villages. It is also

played frequently in Torvaldsland.

I saw, clearly, no other panther girls in or about the enclosure. I did see,

however, a movement within one of the huts, and I supposed that to be another

girl.

I saw no evidence of Talena. She might, of course, lie chained within one of the

dark huts. Perhaps the movement I had seen within the hut had been she. I did

not know.

One thing, however, seemed quite clear. Not all of Verna’s band was now within

the enclosure.

There was probably five or six girls there at the most.

Her band, most reports agreed, consisted of some fifteen women.

I looked at the girls in the enclosure. They did not know I regarded them. They

did not realize their camp had been found. They did not know that soon, perhaps

tomorrow, their camp would be stormed, and they would be captives, destined for

the iron and the slave markets of the south.

But we must move rapidly. I had learned from Grenna, my prisoner, that an

unusually large band of panther girls, under a woman named Hura, was even now

advancing toward these areas of the forests.

I smiled.

When Hura’s band arrived, ready to fight for these pasangs of forest, ready to

drive Verna’s band out, they would meet no opposition.

By that time Verna and her band would be my captives.

Hura’s band would find only an empty camp, and perhaps some signs of struggle.

But we must move swiftly.

Additional members of panther girls, entering these countries of forests, might

well confuse or complicate my plans.

I must conclude my business before their arrival. It did not seem it would be

difficult to do so. I wondered how it was that Hura had under her command so

many girls. Such bands of girls scarcely ever number more than twenty. Yet, if

Grenna was to be believed, following this Hura were a hundred or more armed

women.

I must not allow them to interfere with my plans.

I looked down into the camp, at the girls. I regarded them as a Gorean. They had

had their chance. They had refused to sell Talena to me. They had not dealt with

me. That had been their mistake. The lesson they would be taught would be sharp.

Let each of them, on the auction block, as the men bid upon them, consider how

their affairs might have been better conducted.

Two more girls arrived at the camp, and untied the gate, entered, and then

retied it.

I thought they would look well in slave chains.

I looked again about the camp. I saw some poles behind the huts, on which,

drying, were stretched the skins of four panthers. There were some boxes, some

kegs, near one of the huts.

There was not much else.

I expected, by nightfall, all, or most, of Verna’s band would have returned to

their slender stockade.

I slipped down from my hiding place, and disappeared in the forest.

“Take this captive,” I told Rim, “back to the Tesephone.”

I thrust Grenna toward him. I had again put her wrists in slave bracelets, and

bound them at her belly. She stumbled and fell to her knees, her head down, at

Rim’s feet.

She no longer wore her gag. It was not now necessary.

“I would prefer,” said Rim, “to join in the attack on her band, who once

enslaved me.”

“I recall,” I said, “and I fear that you might be too precipitate.”

Rim smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.

It was now almost impossible to detect where the two-inch strip had been shaved

on his head, from the forehead to the back of his neck.

“I will accompany you,” said Arn.

“Good,” I said.

Arn was eyeing Grenna appreciatively. She saw his eyes, and put down her head

again, swiftly.

I was pleased that Arn liked her. Perhaps I would later give her to him.

“At the Tesephone,” I said, indicating Grenna with my foot, “brand her, and see

that she is enslaved. After that, see to the wounds of the slave.”

The girl moaned.

“Yes, Captain,” said Rim. He reached down and lifted her up, lightly in his

arms.

How beautiful women are, I thought.

Rim carried her from the small fire, and moved into the darkness.

I looked about, at the nine men with me.

“Let us sleep now,” I said. “We shall awaken two Ahn before dawn. We will then

march on the camp of Verna.”

“Good,” said Arn.

I lay down on the leaves, within the ring of sharpened saplings we had set about

our small camp.

I closed my eyes. In the morning I would have Talena back. Who knew how high

might be raised the chair of Bosk?

Things were going well.

I fell asleep.

8
     
We Wait in the Camp of Verna

There is a Gorean saying that free women, raised gently in the high cylinders,

in their robes of concealment, unarmed, untrained in weapons, may, by the

slaver, be plucked like flowers.

There is no such saying pertaining to panther girls.

Needless to say, there are various techniques for the acquisition of slaves,

male and female. Much depends of course, on the number of slavers, the nature of

their quarry, and the particulars of a given chase or hunt.

The fact that we numbered ten, including myself, and that the girls of Verna’s

band numbered some fifteen, and that they were skilled with their weapons, and

dangerous, dictated the nature of our approach.

I had not wished to bring a large number of men through the forest with me, for

they would have been difficult to conceal. Further, I wish to leave a full

garrison at the Tesephone, to protect the ship should here be any danger at the

river. It was my original intention to bring with me merely five, but, when Arn

and his men arrived at the camp, I permitted them to join us. Outlaws move well

in the forests, moving, like panther girls, with swiftness and stealth, and

leaving little trace of their passage. With the element of surprise, and my plan

of attack, I did not think we would need many men. Five, I had conjectured,

would have been sufficient. I smiled to myself. Perhaps it was an arrogance of

my Gorean blood that had led me to my decision. There is more glory to take more

slaves with fewer men. It redounds to the skill and credit of the slaver. Too,

Verna’s band, earlier in the forest, had irritated me. It would gratify me, and

give them a most humiliating memory to carry with them into their slavery, that

they, the entire band, had been taken by a mere handful of males. They might be

panther girls, but they were only women. We would take them easily.

We had weighed various modes of attack. One of the simplest and least dangerous

we had immediately rejected, because of the time involved. It was to besiege the

girls in their stockade, cutting them off from food and water, and merely wait

until they, hungering and thirsting, following our orders, threw down their

weapons, stripped themselves and emerged, one by one, as we called them forth,

surrendering to our binding fiber. A similar plan, but swifter, requires setting

fire to the camp and its encircling wall. This forces the girls into the forest

where, theoretically, they maybe separately taken. There are many dangers here,

however. The girls usually emerge armed and dangerous, rapidly scattering. It

can be extremely perilous to attempt to capture such women. Further, in the

confusion, girls may escape. Perhaps most to be dreaded is the spread of fire to