Hunters of Gor (42 page)

stopped. There was then a third lantern, lower that the other two.

I took the slave whip from my belt and touched Tina on the shoulder with it.

She looked up, frightened.

“Please do not beat me,” she whispered.

I held the whip before her. “Kiss the whip,” I told her.

She did so, and looked up at me, pleading.

“Absolute obedience,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, terrified. “Absolute obedience.”

“Here are your instruction,” I said.

“Ho there,” cried the fellow leaping from the long boar, “it is only a wench.”

“Protect me, Masters!” wept Tina. She had torn her tunic away from her left

shoulder and ripped it to her waist on the left side.

She emerged from the darkness, and fell to her knees in the wet sand before the

man in yellow who had leaped from the longboat. He held an exposed sword. Others

left the boat, too, and looked about. They stood warily. Men remained at

alternate pairs of oars. There were, altogether, sixteen men of Tyros, including

him who held the tiller.

“Protect me, Master!” wept Tina. She knelt in the sand, her head down,

trembling.

With the blade of his sword the fellow lifted her head, and turned it from side

to side.

Tina was beautiful.

He sheathed his sword and, by the hair, pulled her to her feet and faced her to

the fire. He rudely read her collar. “A wench of Bosk of Port Kar,” he laughed.

He thrust her from him, a yard or so, and examined her. “Bosk of Port Kar,” he

said, “had a good eye for slave flesh.”

“Stand straight, Girl,” said another man.

Tina did so, and was examined by them, with the candidness accorded a female

slave.

“I was stolen from Bosk of Port Kar,” wept Tina, “by the terrible Sarus of

Tyros.”

The men looked at one another, exchanging amusements, glances. Tina did not seem

to understand their tacit communication.

“I fled from him,” she wept. “But there were sleen, panthers, in the forest. I

was pursued. I barely escaped with my life.” Again she fell to the sand at their

feet, and pressed her lips to the foot of their leader. “I cannot live in the

forest,” she wept. “Take a miserable slave with you! Please, Masters!”

“Leave her here to die,” laughed one of the men.

The girl trembled.

“Did you build this beacon?” asked another.

“Yes, Maser,” wept the girl. :I wished to attract the attention of any passing

ship.”

“Better the bracelets of a master than the teeth of a sleen?” asked one of the

men of Tyros.

Tina kept her head down.

“Protect me!” wept Tina.

“Perhaps,” said their leader.

“Only do not return me to the terrible Sarus,” she wept. She raised her head.

“You do not know him, do you?” she begged.

“Who is he?” inquired the leader, himself in the yellow of Tyros. The men behind

him smiled.

“I am fortunate,” breathed Tina, “to have fallen in with you.”

The men laughed, not pleasantly.

Tina shook with fright.

“Shall we take her with us?” asked the leader, laughing, of his men.

One of them, without warning, with a single rip that spun her fully about, tore

her slave tunic away. She cried out in misery, her beauty revealed to them.

“Perhaps,” said one of the men.

She stood on the sand, shuddering. Her beauty was drenched in the red of the

flames.

“Stand proudly, Wench,” commanded one of the men.

Tina straightened herself.

“Protect me,” she begged.

“Our protection had a cost,” said their leader, “if beauty such as yours were

torn to pieces by sleen.”

Tina said nothing.

“I would rather,” said the leader, “tear it to pieces myself.”

Tina gasped.

“Lie in the sand before me, Slave,” said the leader. He unbuckled his sword belt

and dropped it to the side.

Tina lay in the sand before him, one knee raised, her head turned to one side.

“Each of us,” said their leader, “will try you out, to see if you are any good.

Of any of us are dissatisfied, you will be left here for the sleen.”

“A girl understands, Master,” she said.

“How will you perform?” he asked.

“Superbly, Master,” she whispered.

He pressed his lips to hers. And I saw her arms, as though eagerly, encircle his

back.

The men laughed.

Few of them noticed, a log, some yards out in the water, move against the tide,

out toward the dark shapes off shore.

My business on the Rhoda would not take long.

Within half of an Ahn I had left her again, lowering myself over the side. Again

the men of Tyros on the beach, did not notice the log, perhaps from some island

or jutting point, washing into shore, some yards from them.

Tina was now kneeling at the side of the leader of the men of Tyros. She was

holding his leg with her hands, breathing deeply, her dark hair loosed over her

shoulders, pressing her cheek against his thigh. She was looking up at him.

“Did Tina please you?” she asked.

“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, Maser!” 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 the leader.

“Of course, Master,” said Tina.

“You served us with great zeal,” he said.

“Yes, Maser,” 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,” 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 they you will be

only 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 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 expect tonight there

would be some cause for celebrating on the two ships, and that they might be

drawn together by lines. They had been long at sea, 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 Caldwell

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.

“Sarus!” he cried. “Sarus!”

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, in the preceding day, 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. 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 forests.

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 her role in the affair of the wine, but she might well convince him of

what she believed mistakenly having inferred this 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.