Hunters of Gor (40 page)

Sarus had reasoned well.

Only I was not a slaver.

I looked down to the beach.

My enemies, and their prisoners, stood at the water’s edge.

Sarus and Hura had come safely to the sea.

I smiled.

Marlenus in his chains, with Rim and Arn, and the others, stood ankle deep in

the water. They were looking out to sea. I saw the fists of the great Ubar

clench in his manacles. He stood before the glaring, sunlit waters. He stood

facing in the direction in which would lie Tyros. Again those massive fists

clenched.

Under the orders of Mira, the twenty-four slave girls in their coffle knelt on

the sand, near the water’s edge, in the position of pleasure slaves.

They, too, in their bonds, faced toward Tyros.

The men in the tunics of Tyros threw their yellow caps into the air and cheered,

and splashed water on one another, laughing. The forest was behind them. They

had come safely to the sea. In the darkness of the forest, I smiled.

During the afternoon I observed the slave girls, tied in pairs, by the neck,

each pair under the guard of a man of Tyros, and a panther girl, gathering

driftwood and, from the forest’s edge, broken branches.

They placed this wood at a point on the beach some twenty yards above the line

of high tide, forming with it a great beacon.

Lit, this beacon would constitute the prearranged signal to the ships.

I noted that Cara and Tina were tied together, forming one pair of slave girls.

Sheera and Grenna, both former panther girls, formed another pair. Two men of

Tyros watched that pair. Sheera was obviously regarded as a troublemaker. Two

men also guarded the pair that contained Verna. I saw that her slave bells had

been removed. I was pleased with the way the pairs were determined. It accorded

with my plans.

Meanwhile, in good order, with confidence, several men of Tyros entered the

forest and cut large numbers of stout saplings. I did not interfere with them.

These cuttings they sharpened at both ends. One end they forced into the ground

high on the beach, among the stones. The other end stood exposed as a defensive

point. In this fashion, sapling by sapling, a rude semicircular palisade, of

some one hundred feet in length, swiftly took form. It shielded them from the

forest. Across the open side, wood was gathered for animal fires, facing the

beach. This shelter would protect them from arrows, should they come, from the

forest, and, by means of the fires, should discourage the too close approach of

either panthers or sleen, which animals, in any case, seldom leave the forest,

seldom prowl on the beach. It was growing dark. It was doubtless for that reason

that the palisade was not closed.

Leading from the open side of the palisade to the great beacon was a column of

pairs of fires.

By means of these, protected by their flames, in case animals should approach

too closely, the great beacon could be fed.

I could not well fire into the palisade without approaching near the water,

without leaving the shelter of the forest. Moreover, I was not interested in

doing so.

“Light the beacon!” called Sarus. There was a great cheer as, in the falling

darkness, the torch thrust down into the oil-soaked wood.

I was not much observed, standing in the background, wearing the yellow of

Tyros.

In a moment, like a wind-torn explosion, flame leaped in a breadth of a dozen

feet on the still shores, on that lonely beach, of Thassa. The men of Tyros were

hundreds of pasangs from civilization, but the flames of that blaze brought

pleasure to them. It was their beacon to the Rhoda and Tesephone. The men of

Tyros began to sing, standing near it. In the back of the semicircular stockade,

miserable, chained, lay Marlenus and Rim and Arn, and the other male slaves.

They lay on their stomachs. The manacles on the wrists of slaves, thus, may be

easily checked by a guard, with a torch, as he makes his rounds. Further, their

heads faced toward the wall of the stockade. The less that a slave can know or

see the more easily controlled he is. Lastly, for the night, their ankles were

crossed and lashed together with binding fiber. There were quite helpless.

Similar precautions were taken with the female slaves. Each now, it being night,

was tightly gagged. Further, they were alternated, the ankles of one being

crossed and bound, and fastened to the throat of the next. This makes it

impossible for the girls to rise to their feet. Their wrists, of course, were

still secured, with Gorean perfection, behind their backs. I would have no

allies within the stockade.

Marlenus and the other male slaves lay closest to the back wall of the stockade.

Then, on the other side of them, closer to the sea, lay the gagged, helplessly

thonged slave girls; then came the blankets and supplies of Hura’s twenty-one

women’ them came the equipment of the fifty-five men of Tyros, almost at the

margin of the animal fires.

Again and again the men of Tyros and their fair allies, the women of Hura,

cheered.

I slipped back, unnoticed, into the darkness. I must make rendezvous with the

Rhoda and Tesephone before Sarus.

I would need, however, help for my plan to succeed. I would see that I had such

help.

Now I must be patient. And I would, for some Ahn, sleep.

I awaken after some two or three Ahn, judging by the flight of the moons.

I washed with a bit of water from a stream, ate some tabuk strips from my

wallet, and went again to the edge of the forest. The tunic of Tyros, in a tight

roll, was tied across my back. I wore green, now black in the darkness, and

moved with stealth, as a warrior moves who hunts men, mixing with the shadows,

one darkness among others, a movement and a silence.

To my satisfaction I saw that the great beacon was burning low. It would need

replenishment.

It was not long that I waited in the shadows before I heard, from within the

stockade, commands and the piteous remonstrances of pleading slave girls. I then

heard, again and again, the fierce, snapping crack of the slave lash. It fell

again and again on the vulnerable, secured bodies of girls in bondage. Its

searing cruelty would teach them, and swiftly, that no choice was theirs but

immediate complete and abject obedience. I heard no screaming. A girl cannot

scream under the lash. She can scarcely breathe. She can scarcely whisper,

hoarsely, piteously, begging for mercy. In Port Kar I had seem the fingernails

of girls torn to the quick as they scratched at stones against which they were

tied. If she is bound against a wall her entire body may be injured, wiped with

abrasions, as she tried to escape the whip. For this reason a girl to be whipped

is often suspended from a ring or a pole.

In a few minutes as I had expected, I saw some pairs of slave girls, three

pairs, each pair tied together by the neck, brutally driven, stumbling, crying

out, from the palisade. A man of Tyros, with a whip, followed each pair.

I noted that, as I would have supposed, and had been anticipating, that the

girls driven forth now to gather wood, and were isolated in the slave line

between Sheera and Grenna, both panther girls. The other two pairs, whimpering,

were girls from Marlenus’ camp. All of these girls were terrified of the forest.

None of hem, presumably, could survive alone in it. It was natural that the

pairs had been arranged as they had, particularly that of Cara and Tina, given

their location in the coffle. I needed Tina, and I preferred to have Cara, too,

though, for my plan, another girl might do as well. If Cara had not been tied

with Tina I should still have done what I did. I needed the pair which contained

Tina. I had suspected, as long ago as Lydius, that that fantastic little wench

might prove of great utility to my enterprises. I had not, however, expected to

apply her as I now intended.

The men of Tyros, following the weeping girls with their whips, did not care to

enter the forest.

“Gather wood, quickly, and return!” cried the fellow guarding Cara and Tina.

“Do not drive us into the forest!” begged Cara. She knelt and put her head to

his feet.

“Come with us,” wept Tina. “Please, Master!” she knelt before him, holding his

ankle, her lips pressed to his foot.

For answer the slave lash fell twice.

Weeping, the two girls sprang to their feet and ran to the edge of the forest

and, trying not to enter into its shadows, rapidly, weeping, began to break

branches and gather wood.

“Hurry! Hurry!” called their guard.

He snapped the whip.

The two girls in bondage knew well the sound of the whip. They cried out with

misery.

They had already been beaten, too, in the stockade. Their delicate flesh, like

that of any slave girl, was terrified of the lash. The only woman, slave or

free, who does not cringe before the lash is she who had not felt it.

But, too, they feared the forest, the darkness, the animals. There were girls of

civilized cities. The forest at night, with its sounds, its perils, the teeth

and claws of its predators, was a nightmare of terror for them.

They carried two armloads of branches, and fell to their knees before the guard.

“Let it be enough,” they wept.

They wished to return, and promptly, to the light of the animal fires.

They looked up at him, pleading.

“Gather more wood, Girls,” said he to them.

“Yes, Master,” they said.

“And deeper in the forest,” said he.

“Please!’ they wept.

He lifted the whip.

“I obey!” cried Cara.

“I obey!” wept Tina.

From far off, in the forest, came the snarling of a panther.

The girls looked at one another.

The man gestured with the whip.

They fled to the darkness of the trees and began to break and gather wood.

In a few minutes, each with an armload of sticks and branches, they emerged.

They knelt before the figure in the yellow of Tyros who stood with the whip,

waiting for them, on the beach.

“Is it enough?” begged Cara, looking down.

“It is quite enough,” I told them.

They looked up, startled.

“Be silent!” I warned them.

“You!” breathed Cara.

“Master,” whispered Tina, her eyes wide.

“Where is the guard?” asked Tina.

“He stumbled and fell,” I told them. “It seems he struck his head upon a stone.”

I did not expect he would awaken for several hours.

“I see,” said Cara, smiling.

He had not expected danger from the seaward side of the beach. There were many

large, flattish, rounded stones on the beach. He had encountered one.

“There is great danger here for you, Master,” said Tina. :You had best flee.”

I looked across the beach, some two hundred yards, to the palisade. I wiped sand

from my right hand on the woolen tunic of Tyros.

Then I looked down at Tina.

“There are more than fifty men of Tyros here,” said Tina.

“There are fifty-five, excluding Sarus of Tyros, their leader,” I told her.

She looked at me.

“It was you who followed us,” said Cara.

“You must flee,” whispered Tina, “there is danger here for you.”

“I think,” said Cara, smiling, “there is danger her, too, for those of Tyros.”

I looked up at the moons.

It was near the twentieth hour, the Gorean midnight. I must hurry.

“Follow me,” I told the two slaves.

They leaped to their feet and, still tied together by the neck, in their

tattered woolen tunics, followed me along the beach.

Behind us we heard men calling out the name of another man, doubtless that of

the guard, his struck unexpectedly by the blow of a stone. Doubtless he would

conjecture that the girls had managed to sneak behind him and strike him, thus

making good their escape. There would be wonderment at that, of course, for the

girls had been only girls of the civilized city, thought to be terrified of the

forest night.

We saw torches far behind us, the search for the guard.

I lengthened my stride. The girls, tied together, stumbling, struggled to match

my pace.

The wood we left behind us on the beach. The men of Tyros might use it for their

fires, and their beacon.

I did not begrudge them its use. It would do them little good.

I looked up at the sun. it was near the tenth hour, the Gorean noon.

I snapped off a large branch, extending from a fallen tree, with the flat of my

foot.

I then dragged it down to the beach and threw it on the great pile of wood which

I, and Cara and Tina, had accumulated.

I had freed them of the neck tether, and they had worked tirelessly, and with

ardor. They had worked as might have free persons. It had not been necessary to

use the whip, stolen from the guard, on them.

Their zeal puzzled me. They were only female slaves.

“We are ready,” I told them.

We surveyed the great construction of dried branches and gathered driftwood. We

had done well.

We had trekked during the night and into the morning. Then we had not stopped to

rest, but had begun to gather wood.

I surveyed our great accumulation of driftwood and branches. We had done well.

Being slaves they had dared not inquire of me the intention of our efforts. I