Captive of Gor (26 page)

tier of cages. I leapt to my feet and pressed against the bars.

“Master!” I called.

He stopped.

I thrust my hand through the bars, toward him.

He took a hard candy from his pouch, and held it, outside of my reach.

I struggled to reach the candy. I could not. Then he handed it to me.

“Thank you, Master,” I said. I put the candy in my mouth. I had known his step.

Few of the guards carried candies. I was pleased with myself. I did not think

Inge would have succeeded in winning a candy from him.

I sat in the straw and sucked the candy.

“I forgive you, El-in-or,” said Inge. Her voice sounded weary.

I did not answer her, for I feared she might want to taste the candy, that it

would be a trick on her part.

I heard Lana approach. She thrust out her hand. “Give it to me,” she said.

“It’s mine,” I said.

“Give it to Lana,” said Lana. “I am first in the cage.”

(pg. 179) She was stronger than I.

I gave her the candy and she put it in her mouth.

I crawled to Inge. “Do you really forgive me, Inge?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Inge.

I crawled away from Inge, and lay down on my belly in the straw.

What Inge had said was true. I was a slave.

I rolled over on my back in the straw and again stared at the ceiling, that

obdurate steel plating, the flooring of the cage in the tier above us. I lay

there naked in the straw feeling the steel plating beneath my back. “Yes, I was

a slave. “Yes,” I said to myself, “you are a slave, Elinor.” The panther girls

taught you that, and the man in the hut. You are a natural slave. I lifted one

knee. But you are a beautiful slave, and a clever slave, I told myself.

I rolled onto my belly in the straw and picked up a bit of straw and poked at

the floor with it.

Odd, I thought, how Elinor Brinton, she who had been so rich, so elegant, so

arrogant, she who had been of Park Avenue, she who had owned the Maserati, was

now, on a distant world, only this, a common slave, naked, on her belly in

straw, steel plating beneath it, behind heavy bars, caged, merchandise.

I had no hope of returning to Earth. The men in the silver ship had doubtless

been of another world, not this one. I had seen no ships, nor men, such as they,

on this world. Besides, for all I knew, they might be even more terrible, and

fierce, than those of the black ship. I had no desire to meet them. I was also

frightened by the memory of the huge golden creature who had accompanied them.

Such men, and such a creature, I was sure, would not be likely to return me to

Earth. I had seen their power, when they had destroyed the black ship. I was

frightened. And, I mused, the men of the black, disklike ship, who had brought

me here, were not such that I would expect them, even if they should find me,

which I regarded as unlikely, to return me to Earth. I had learned I could not

bargain with them. In the hut I had learned what I was to them, only the most

(pg. 180) abject of female slaves, a girl fit only to kneel at their feet and

beg to be commanded. And even if I should serve them, might I not then, that I

might not fall into the hands of their enemies, or reveal their plans and

plotting, be slain? And even if I did serve them, and they, in their lenience,

spared me, I knew that I would be kept by them only as a girl, another slave, to

be sold or disposed of as they saw fit. I was pleased that I had escaped in the

forest. They would have little hope of finding me again. The chances that I

might have found my way back to Targo’s chain, or be returned to him, were not

high. Indeed, it would have been probable that I, naked and bound, alone,

defenseless in the forest, would have died of exposure or fallen prey to

panthers or sleen.

My thoughts strayed back to that terrible night, when I fled from the hut, into

the darkness, leaving the beast feeding on the carcass of the destroyed,

bloodied sleen.

I shuddered.

I had run madly away, through the dark trees, stumbling, falling, rolling,

getting up and running again. Sometimes I ran between the great Tur trees, on

the carpeting of leaves between them, sometimes I made my way through more

thickset trees, sometimes through wild, moonlit tangles of brush and vines. I

even found myself, once, when passing through the high Tur trees, at the circle,

where the panther girls had danced. I saw the slave post to one side, where I

had been tied. The circle was deserted. I fled again. At times I would stop and

listen for pursuit, but there was none. The man, too, fearing the beast in its

feeding frenzy, had fled. I most was afraid that the beast itself might follow

me. But I was sure that it would not soon do so. I do not think it was even

aware I had fled the hut. I expected it to feed until it was gorged, and then

perhaps it would sleep. Once I nearly stumbled on a sleen, bending over a slain

Tabuk, a slender, graceful, single-horned antelopelike creature of the thickets

and forests. The sleen lifted its long, triangular jaws and hissed. I saw the

moonlight on the three rows of white, needlelike teeth. I screamed and turned

and fled away. The sleen returned to its kill. As I fled I sometimes startled

small (pg. 181) animals, and once a herd of Tabuk. I tried, in the moonlight, to

run in the same direction, to find my way from the forest, somehow. I feared I

would run in circles. The prevailing northern winds, carrying rain and moisture,

had coated the northern sides of the high trees with vertical belts of moss,

extending some twenty or thirty feet up the trunk. By means of this device I

continued, generally, to run southward. I hoped I might find a stream, and

follow it to the Laurius. As I ran through the darkness, I suddenly saw, before

me, some fifty or sixty yards away, four pairs of blazing eyes, a pride of

forest panthers. I pretended not to see them and, heart pounding, turned to one

side, walking through the trees. At this time, at night, I knew they would be

hunting. Our eyes had not met. I had the strange feeling that they had seen me,

and knew that I had seen them, as I had seen them, and sensed that they had seen

me. But our eyes had not directly met. We had not, so to speak, signaled to one

another that we were aware of one another. The forest panther is a proud beast,

but, too, he does not care to be distracted in his hunting. We had not

confronted one another. I only hoped that I might not be what they were hunting.

I was not. They turned aside into the darkness, padding away. I nearly fainted.

I felt so helpless. I pulled at my bound wrists, but they were uncompromisingly

secured behind my back.

Then, to my joy, I felt a drop of rain on my naked body, and then another. And

then, suddenly, with the abruptness of the storms of the Gorean north, the cold

rains, in icy sheets, began to pelt downwards. In the forest, tied, bound, in

the icy rain, I threw back my head and laughed. I was overjoyed. The rain would

wipe out my trail! I might escape the beast! I doubted that even a sleen, Gor’s

most perfect hunter, could follow my trail after such a downpour. I laughed, and

laughed, and then, crouching, hid in some brush, trying to protect myself from

the rain.

After some two hours the rain stopped and I crawled out from the brush and again

continued my way southward.

I no longer feared pursuit, but I was now more aware that I had been of my

predicament in the forest itself.

(pg. 182) I tried to run through the binding fiber that held my wrists, rubbing

it against the trunk of a fallen tree, but I could not loosed it, or rub through

it. Gorean binding fiber is not made to be so easily removed from a girl’s

wrists. After an hour I was bound as securely as before.

I decided I had better keep moving.

I felt helpless, vulnerable and futile. I was like an animal without hands, a

four-footed animal, save that I had no hide to protect me, but only the softness

of my flesh, and I did not have the delicate senses, the smell and the hearing

of such animals to protect me, and I did not have their swiftness, the fleetness

of their flight. I was ripe quarry.

I pulled at my wrists, helplessly.

I fled southward.

I was hungry.

At bushes I stopped and nibbled at berries.

Then, shortly before noon, I stumbled onto a small stream, which could only be a

tributary of the Laurius.

I flung myself down on the pebbles of its shore and lapped the fresh water,

slaking my thirst.

Then, rising, I entered the stream, feeling its cold waters on my ankles, and

waded downstream. I wished to take this further precaution against leaving a

trail behind me, a stain of odor on a twig, a dampness of perspiration on a

leaf.

I followed the stream for an Ahn, sometimes stopping to lift my head to

overhanging branches, to nibble at hanging fruit.

Then the stream joined a larger stream, and I followed that further. I had

little doubt that this larger stream would join the Laurius.

As I waded in the water, bound, I asked myself if I should try to make my way to

the Laurius, and thence to Laura. There I would be fed. There, too, I would be

re-enslaved. I asked myself if I should not rather try to find a hut in the

forest, where there might be a slave girl, who would unbind me, and give me

food. She surely would not want her master to see me, for I was beautiful. Then

I was frightened, for what if the girl would slay me, or sell me (pg. 183)

herself secretly, to hunters, or give me to panther girls, who would make me

their slave, or sell me. They might even return me to the man and the beast in

the hut, for more arrowpoints!

I did not know what to do. I was in misery.

Also, recalling that I had been sold for only one hundred arrowpoints, for some

reason, irritated me. It made me furious. Surely I was worth much more. As girls

went, I was valuable. I should have brought pieces of gold! Not arrowpoints!

In my anger I did not notice the man, standing back in the brush, near the shore

of the stream.

Suddenly a leather loop fell about my neck. I was startled, and turned. It drew

tight. I was snared.

Bound, naked, helpless as a Tabuk, I was snared.

He drew me toward him.

I was pulled from the edge of the stream, where I had waded. I felt the pebbles

of the shore under my feet, and then grass, and then, whether from hunger, or

exhaustion, or fear, everything went black, and I fainted.

I awakened sometime later. I was being carried in a man’s arms. I wore his

shirt. It was longer than a common female slave tunic. The sleeves were rolled

back. It was warm. My hands were no longer cruelly bound behind my back. A loop

of binding fiber had been tied about my belly and knotted in back. My hands were

confined in front of me by slave bracelets. The binding fiber, in its center,

had been knotted about the chain of the bracelets, so that my hands were held

close to my belly. The loose ends of the binding fiber had then been knotted

together behind my back, so that I could not reach the knot. The bracelets were

not tight, but I could not slip them. I did not care.

“You are awake, El-in-or,” he said.

It was one of Targo’s guards, he who had guarded me at the physician’s.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“We though that we had lost you.”

“I was stolen by panther girls,” I said. “They sold me to a man. There was a

beast. He fled. I escaped.”

(pg. 184) I was conscious of the strength of his arms. They frightened me.

“I am still white silk,” I told him.

“I know,” he said.

I reddened.

“Fortunately for you,” he said.

I looked down.

Suddenly he dropped me.

“You are awake,” he said. “You can walk.”

Sitting on the grass, in pain, displeased, I looked up at him.

“No, I cannot walk,’ I said. “I cannot even stand.”

He tied up the shirt in the back, sticking it into the binding fiber. He then

went and cut a switch.

When he returned I was on my feet.

“Good,” he said. He pulled down the shirt and threw away the switch.

I walked before him.

“Targo had already left Laura,” he said. “We will join him across the river, at

the night’s camp.”

We walked on.

“If you had left Laura with Targo,” he said, “you might have seen Marlenus of

Ar.”

I gasped. I had heard of the great Ubar.

“In Laura?” I asked.

“Sometimes he comes north, with some hundred tarnsmen, for the hunting in the

forests,” said the guard.

“What does he hunt?” I asked.

“Sleen, panthers, women,” said the guard.

“Oh,” I said.

“He hunts for a week or two,” said the guard, “and then returns to Ar.” He

pushed me ahead with the flat of his foot. I had been dallying. “The duties of a

Ubar,” said he, “are pressing, and Marlenus looks forward to his hunting.”

“I see,” I said.

“When he is finished he sends his catch back by caravan,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

(pg. 185) We walked on.

“Is he after anything in particular?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the guard, “Verna, an outlaw girl.”

I stopped.

“Do not turn around,” he said.