John Norman (42 page)

Then she was alone in the absolute darkness.

She moaned. She ran. She struck her left thigh on a projection of rock. She fell on the stone. She struggled to her feet. She heard pursuit. She fled deeper into the passage.

Then she stopped. No longer did she hear sounds from behind her.

She crouched down. She waited, frightened. She crouched in the pitch blackness breathing heavily, terrified.

There was no sound behind her.

She went further in the tunnel, slowly, carefully, silently. Then again she stopped, crouched down, waited.

Again there was no sound from behind her. The pounding of her heart seemed loud. She did not move.

Perhaps the men were searching elsewhere. There were many caves in the cliffs. There were other females to thong. There were bags of salt to find. There was fur to locate, and flint to be sacked and carried off. Surely not all the women would be caught. There was no pursuit. She waited, scarcely breathing now. Perhaps the intruders had gone. Perhaps they wished only to strike with swiftness and, swiftly, be gone. Perhaps they had taken enough fur, and flint and salt, and women, to satisfy them. Perhaps even now they were on their way back to their own camp.

She gradually became sure of this as the minutes passed. I am safe, she thought.

Then, from far down the passage behind her, she heard a sound, and, to her misery, saw the flicker of torches.

She, moaning, leaped to her feet and ran deeper in the passage. Then suddenly she stopped, terrified. She knew that there was, at a place in this passage, a drop to the left of some fifty feet. She recalled it when Old Woman, with her torch, had shown her the passage months ago. Occasionally in the shelters there were such crevices and pits. One pit, in another shelter, was used for refuse. It was more than twenty feet deep, and had sheer sides. She hugged the right side of the passage. Her foot dislodged a small pebble and she heard it drop away from her to the left. It made a clear sound as it struck the stone, in two places below. She almost cried out with anguish. She heard a shout from behind her, reverberating in the twisting passage. Looking over her shoulder she saw the flicker of torches, four of them. She moved, back against the stone, past the crevice. She then sped on. Her thigh felt wet and she knew it was bleeding, from where she had struck it on the projection of stone.

Suddenly her left foot splashed in cold water. She cried out in misery, startled. She stopped, and felt about herself in the darkness. She heard the dripping of water. She scraped her right forearm on the stone. There were other passages, she knew, some hundred yards beyond the crevice, passages other than that leading to the cave of the hands, the animal paintings, which had once been shown to her by Old Woman. She sank to her knees, moaning, disoriented. She shuddered. She realized she did not know where she was. She was lost.

From somewhere behind her, seemingly from far away, she heard shouts.

She crouched very still, hoping that her pursuers would choose other tunnels, would give up the chase.

But the noises came closer. Then, again, as though from afar this time, she saw the dim flicker of torches.

She struggled to her feet. Gasping, weeping, she put forth her hands, her fingers, and felt the stone sides of the tunnel. Irrationally, heedlessly, she sped forward. The torches, the noises, were behind her. Then suddenly, crying out, she plunged forward; she seized at nothingness; sprawling, knees and hands scraped, she struck stone some two feet below; she lay there sobbing; then, crawling, weeping, holding her hand before her, she moved deeper into the tunnel; she crawled for some four to five minutes; she could hear the sound of pursuit from behind, louder now; then to her misery she felt solid stone before her. In the darkness groping, frantically, she tried to discover an opening. Wildly she stood up. She felt about the sides, and before her, and over her head, and at her feet. There was no opening. She had fled into a blind tunnel. She sank to her knees in the darkness at the wall of stone; she leaned against it, putting the side of her face against the cool, granular surface which prevented her further advance.

She rose to her feet and put her back against the wall of stone, putting her hands back, feeling it with the palms of her hands.

She watched the torches growing closer, heard the sounds of the men. She saw them then, far down the tunnel, stepping down from the ledge from which she had fallen, then approaching. There were four torches, six men, primitive hunters. She pressed back against the wall, in terror, watching them approach. They came closer. Then the first of them lifted his torch, and she was illuminated. Her hair was wild; her eyes were deep, frantic, filled with fear; she wore the brief, wrap-around skirt of deerskin, exposing the left thigh; about her neck was knotted the several loops of the necklace of shells, of claws and leather. She faced them, a bare-breasted, cornered, primitive woman. But, too, she was Brenda Hamilton, a woman of our time, at the mercy of primitive hunters. Inwardly she moaned. Had she hoped to elude them? They could follow her even in the twisting darkness of the caves; had she been calm they could have followed her, by the simple woman smell she could not help but leave; but she had been running, terrified, broken out in the sweat, the unmistakable secretions, of driven feminine quarry; she had been game to them; the chase was now ended; the snare was readied; they had followed their girl quarry, their woman fugitive, easily; the outcome had never been in doubt; behind her, marking her trail, belying her passage, like a traitor’s signal, perfidious, treacherous, had hung the perfume, stimulatory to hunters, excitatory to predatory males, of her terror; the female fear-smell. She, caught, had had no chance. The others, too, lifted their torches. They regarded her, she could see, with pleasure, with anticipation. Their leader, a heavily bearded fellow, lifted his hand. In it, coiled, were several narrow loops of leather thongs. He grinned. Then he handed his torch to another man and approached her. In his hand were the thongs. She could not take her eyes from them. He held them up before her. She felt almost hypnotized. She could not take her eyes from them. In his hand were the thongs with which to bind her. She felt her shoulder blades, the deliciousness of her ass, press back against the stone.

Then there was another torch, from behind the men.

“Gunther!” cried Hamilton.

“Where are the hunters?” asked Gunther.

“They are gone,” said Hamilton.

“These are the Weasel People,” said Gunther, indicating with his head the men about.

“Oh, no,” whispered Hamilton.

“Blood enemies of the Men,” said Gunther. He smiled. “And you are a woman of the Men.”

“Protect me, Gunther,” whispered Hamilton.

Gunther stood there, the men of the Weasel People parting to admit him. His torch was in his left hand. Across his back was strapped his rifle. In his right hand, reddish in the light of the torch, was the drawn Luger. She saw, on his left wrist, the watch which, months before, Cloud had brought back from the darkness, when he and William had been driven from the camp.

“Save me, Gunther!” cried Hamilton.

He regarded her. Then he turned away, carrying the torch, and made his way back down the passage.

“Gunther!” screamed Hamilton. “Don’t leave me!”

Then she saw again only the thongs in the hand of the primitive leader, the savage. These were the thongs of the Weasel People. The Weasel People were the blood enemies of the Men, and she was a woman of the Men. She pressed back. At her back was the wall of stone. The leader reached for her. She screamed. The others crowded about.

Hamilton opened her eyes. Every bone and muscle in her body seemed sore. She tried, weakly, to separate her hands. They were thonged tightly behind her back. Butterfly lay near her, her small body similarly secured. “Turtle,” said Butterfly, tears in her eyes. Hamilton looked about herself, at the other women, crowded together, bound, at the close, rounded walls of roughly fitted stone. She sat up, putting her back against the stone. She looked up, toward the top of the circular, stone-lined pit, some ten feet above, some eight feet in diameter, to the grille of heavy branches, weighted down with stones, closing it. She was puzzled that the stone had been roughly shaped. The blocks were large, some as much as a yard in width. Their prison reminded her of a well, save that it was too wide, and too shallow. In the pit the prisoners were naked. They had been stripped days ago at the shelters, and not permitted clothing afterwards. In the clearing before the shelters, the necklaces, proclaiming them of the Men, had been cut from their necks with stone knives and thrown aside. They had then been switched and put in throat coffle, thonged by the neck with rawhide, and given their burdens, the spoils of the camp of the Men, flint, fur, salt, weapons, tools, dried roots, dried meat. The journey had been a nightmare for them, hurried, switched, exhausted, driven beasts of burden. They had been forced to move under the switch even after dark. The Weasel People had no wish to encounter the Men.

“Turtle,” said Butterfly.

Hamilton smiled at the girl. She crept near to Hamilton, and put her head against her arm. “Do not cry,” whispered Hamilton. Butterfly put her head down, and lay close to Hamilton.

Hamilton’s attention was caught by a scattering of small objects on the floor of the pit. They were tiny, and seemed to be of some vegetable matter. She did not understand what they could be.

She moved her abused body, then closed her eyes in pain and remained still.

“I am afraid of him,” she heard Cloud whisper to Antelope.

Hamilton opened her eyes and regarded Cloud, who was kneeling. Cloud was bound as the others. “What will he do with me?” asked Cloud.

Hamilton did not envy Cloud, for it had been she who had, with the strength of the Men behind her, thrown Gunther’s and William’s belongings to their feet when they had been driven from the camp, who had struck Gunther with a switch, herding him into the darkness, who had taken his watch. In the cave, when Hamilton had been captured, she had seen that Gunther had already recovered the watch. Cloud had been captured shortly before Hamilton had. She looked at Cloud. Cloud was trembling. “What will he do with me?” asked Cloud of Hamilton.

“I do not know,” said Hamilton. She did not envy Cloud. Antelope kissed Cloud on the shoulder, and Cloud put her head, eyes wide, against Antelope’s shoulder.

Hamilton looked up, through the grille. The pit was not open to the sky. Some five feet above the grille, on poles, was a roof of branches and thatch. Rain could not fall into the pit.

Hamilton could not understand the meaning of such a construction. She did not think it was to shelter female slaves. No solicitation had been shown to them in the journey from the caves of the Men. She looked about herself. They were the females of hated enemies, and the Weasel People, with primitive arrogance, with primitive brutality, had treated them precisely as what they were.

Flower looked at her. The right side of Flower’s head bore a deep bruise. She had been the first female of the Men taken. From a ledge at the shelters, Hamilton had seen her assailant brutally club her senseless to his feet, then jerk her hands behind her back and tie her. Flower looked away from Hamilton, miserable.

Ugly Girl was sitting, like Hamilton, with her back against the stone. Her eyes were open, and she was staring across the stone floor to the wall opposite her, seeing nothing. Hamilton looked at her broad head, the simplicity of the eyes, the almost chinless face, the heavy, lank hair, the squat, breasted torso, the short, thick legs. Hamilton shivered. Ugly Girl’s wrists, like those of the others, were crossed and tied tightly behind her back. It is almost as if she were human, thought Hamilton. Why should they tie her like the rest of us? She is not even human. Why did they take her? What would they want her for? The thought crossed Hamilton’s mind that they might have taken her for food. Perhaps the Weasel People were cannibals? She shuddered at the thought that they might all be being kept for food. But she had not heard that the Weasel People ate human flesh. Perhaps they only ate those women who did not sufficiently please them? Hamilton shuddered. She knew she would do what was necessary to survive. She was a primitive woman. She closed her eyes. Pride was not a luxury a primitive woman could afford. To avoid being eaten she knew she would do anything, and eagerly. She opened her eyes and glared across the flooring to Ugly Girl, feeling a sudden hostility for the simple, doglike creature. When Hamilton had first been caught, held by the hair, on the roof of the cliffs, Ugly Girl, wickedly, with ferocity, biting, scratching, had thrown herself on her captor, and he had released her, and she had fled. Turning back, she had seen that Ugly Girl, in turn, had been caught. Ugly Girl had held out her hand to her, but she had not returned to help, but had turned away, continuing her flight. Surely it was irrational that both of them should be apprehended. But later, in a blind tunnel, trapped, cornered, she, too, clever, modern woman had felt the relentless snare thongs of captors. Ugly Girl, after this, had not looked at her. She would look past her, not seeing her. This infuriated Hamilton. “Sow!” said Hamilton to Ugly Girl, in the language of the Men. Ugly Girl did not look at her, nor seem to listen. What would they want with her, Hamilton asked herself. She was angry that they even kept Ugly Girl with them, as though she might be human. She was bound as might have been a human female! Did the Weasel People intend this as a humiliation, an insult, to the women of the Men, their new slaves? Hamilton was furious.

Nine females of the men had been caught, Cloud and Antelope; Butterfly and Flower; Ugly Girl; Turtle; a pregnant female, whose name was Feather; and two others, who had been slow of foot, Squirrel and Awl. Several others bad escaped. Some had not been at the shelters at the time of the attack. Some had scattered and fled successfully. Nurse, and one other, Hamilton knew, had fled over the roof of the cliffs and escaped down the other side. Short Leg bad not been caught. Old Woman had been thrown down the side of the cliff. Hamilton did not know if she had lived or not. The children had broken and run and the men, intent on adult females, had not pursued them. She had seen one child struck at and bloodied before the shelters. She did not know if he had survived or not.