John Norman (23 page)

“You could at least let me heal, you beast,” she said to him. “What do you care for my pleasure?” she demanded.

But he had turned away from her now, and, picking up his pouch, and his spear, disappeared among the trees.

“Don’t leave me!” she cried. “Please don’t leave me!”

And as she lay there, tied, she realized that he did not care for her pleasure. It was of no interest to him. And that, if he wished, he would leave her, lying behind him bound, helpless, alone in the forest.

With horror she suddenly understood that she had met a man to whom she was nothing, a man who cared nothing for her will, her desires, her feelings. Her delicacy, her sensibility, were not of interest to him. She knew she could expect nothing from him. From her, she knew, he would expect everything. She lay back, knowing that she was the helpless property of such a brute, and moaned.

When he returned to her the moon was full.

She struggled to sit upright, but could not do so. She rose on her elbows, knees bent, and looked at him.

He carried a fruit, a yellowish, tart applelike fruit, which he held for her. Gratefully she fed on the fruit. When she had eaten around the core he threw the core away. He then gave her a piece of dried meat from his pouch. It was tough and dry, and gamy, but she chewed it, and, with pleasure, swallowed it.

“Thank you,” she said.

He then bent toward her, to put his mouth to hers. She shrank back in the thongs. She tried to turn her head to one side, but he held her mouth to his.

Then she understood, suddenly, that he held water in his mouth, that he was bringing her drink.

Lifting her head she took the water from his mouth.

She lay back.

“Thank you,” she said.

Tree looked down at her, lying bound in the moonlight.

She looked up at him. It had pleased her to take water from his mouth. She had touched her teeth to his, and they had seemed hard and strong.

Tree wondered about this woman. She did not kick well. She seemed a cold fish.

“You will learn to kick well,” he said to her, “if you would eat.”

Brenda Hamilton looked at him blankly.

He looked at her intently. He put his hand gently on her left breast. She was very beautiful, this woman. She was more beautiful than the other women in the camp, except perhaps Flower. It was too bad she did not kick well. She would be used to do much work. Perhaps she could be tied at night with Ugly Girl.

He looked down at her.

“You will learn to kick well,” he said to Brenda Hamilton. “You will learn to kick well, if you would eat.”

15

They were near the village now. She could smell the smoke. She was frightened.

She pulled back on the tether, shaking her head, wildly. “No, please!” she said.

The leather, one end knotted about her neck, the other end in Tree’s fist, was taut between them.

“No, please,” she said.

Tree jerked the rope toward him and Brenda Hamilton stumbled forward, half strangling, and fell on her left shoulder at his feet, her wrists, tied behind her, unable to break her fall. He jerked her to her knees by the leash, at his thigh. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “Please do not take me to them,” she begged.

He jerked her to her feet and she stood again, his rope on her neck, facing him.

Then he turned and walked toward the village.

She felt the tug of the leash, and followed.

This morning, she had slept, fitfully, twisted on her side, still bound as she had been the night before, and then, at dawn, when the dew was still dark on the leaves, and there was only a half light, he had slapped her awake, and her brief dream of clean sheets, and her bedroom in her former apartment in California, vanished, and she found herself, face stinging, startled, cold, lying in wet grass, bound in the thongs of a primeval master.

He fed her as he had the night before, and then, when the warmth of the food was in her body, he used her briefly, she weakly trying to resist, knowing its futility, and then unbound her ankles from the roots, freeing his rope. She felt the rope then tied about her throat. He then released her hands from the root and the rawhide thong which, during the night, had so perfectly imprisoned her wrists. She was then led quickly to the stream, and thrust into the water, to wash herself. She shuddered, but cleaned herself. She then felt, again, her hands tied behind her back. He led her again to where he had left his pouch and spear. Gathering these, he had turned and, she following on the tether, had disappeared into the trees.

They had not walked more than half an hour before she had smelled the smoke. She knew his people were near.

She had pulled back on the tether, shaking her head wildly. “Please no!” she had begged.

She had then been briefly disciplined by the leash, taught its power to control her.

Then she had stood again, facing him, and he had turned and walked toward the village. She, terrified, miserable, obedient now to the leather collar of her leash, followed him. She had no choice.

Four times during the night had Tree used her body, once awakening her to his long, pounding thrusts.

The fourth time, in spite of her stiffness, her soreness, to her astonishment, and fear, she had sensed the beginning of a strange sensation in her body; she did not know whether it was painful or pleasurable; it was very different from anything she had felt before; she was terrified of the sensation, rudimentary and inchoate, incipient, because she sensed that she might be swept helplessly away from herself before it, that it might, if unchecked, transform her from a human person with dignity, though abused, into a degraded, uncontrollable, spasmodically responding female animal. “I must never let them take me from myself,” she told herself. “I must always retain my control. I must always keep my dignity. I must always remain an intelligent, self-restrained, dignified human being, a true human person.” But she had feared that if the sensation had not been checked, she would have, had his touch continued, been literally forced to succumb to it, that it would have reached a point where she could not have helped herself, that it would have been entirely in his hands. She had sensed then that, had he wished to do so, he could have made her an animal, that animal she feared most to be, a beautiful, helpless, responding female beast, the uncontrollable, yielding prize of a greater, a stronger beast. She had closed her eyes, and turned her head to one side, and gritted her teeth, and fought the sensation, trying to keep her body inert, trying, desperately, not to feel. Then, when she sensed that she would lose the battle, and she wanted to cry out, “Don’t stop! Please don’t stop!” he had finished with her, and had withdrawn, to roll to one side, to sleep.

“I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate you. I hate you!”

Then she had resolved to resist more mightily than ever, to yield never to such a beast, or to others like him. “I will never permit them to rob me of my dignity,” she told herself. But she was afraid, for she recalled the beginning of the strange sensation. It kept recurring to her, even as she followed him on her tether, and it made her belly and inwardness grow warm, and excited. Once he stopped and turned and regarded her. She stopped, and looked down, blushing. She had seen his eyes, and the slight flaring of his nostrils. She knew in the heart of her that this strange man, whose very life in this fierce time might depend on the sharpness of his senses, had literally smelled her desire, the secretions that acknowledged her body’s receptivity, its readiness. He had walked toward her. “No,” she had said, turning away. “Go away. Go away!” She felt his hand on her, and she shuddered. “Go away!” she cried.

He had turned from her and again taken his way through the trees, she, leashed, following.

“I will resist you!” she cried.

She was furious with him.

Now, outside the tiny village, the trail encampment, Tree, with his caught female, stopped.

He was downwind of the camp, that he might approach it sensing, rather than being sensed. If anything was amiss in the camp, in particular, if there were the odors of strange men, it would be well to know. The Weasel People were enemies of the Men. They and the Men did not sell women or salt to one another. Antelope had originally been of the Bear People. But Wolf and Runner had stolen her from the Weasel People, who had taken her, with others, in a raid. The Men and the Bear People and the Horse Hunters did not steal from one another. They would sell women, or flint or salt to one another. But Antelope was not returned to the Bear People. They had not taken her from the Weasel People. The Men had done this. Besides she was comely. The Men kept her. Antelope did not mind. The Men were fine hunters. She and her friend, Cloud, were often fed by Tree. Both of them were good females, good kickers. The white-skinned slave girl, the girl he had taken in the forest, was a cold fish. But she would learn to kick, if she would eat. Antelope was not kept as a slave. That was because she was of the Bear People, who were friends of the Men. But she was not permitted to return to the Bear People. She belonged, now, to the Men. Though not a slave, the Men kept her as they did the others, as a woman. Ugly Girl was kept as a slave, which was like being the woman of a woman; she was not of the group, or of a friendly group; she was simply slave; the white-skinned female, Tree’s catch from the forest, too, was not of the group; she, too, thus, like Ugly Girl, or a girl of the Weasel People, would be kept as a simple slave; she must take orders from anyone in the group; she would be much beaten; she would have no rights, not even the life right, that accorded to members of the group; if she did not work well, or was not pleasing, she might be killed. Tree tested the odors, and found that all was well in the camp.

He would now circle the camp and approach from upwind, that they would know his approach, and that he brought with him a female. That would give the camp time to gather, and greet him. It would please Tree’s vanity to bring her in, presenting her as a new slave to the men.

They would be much pleased to see the new acquisition.

In Tree’s opinion she was more beautiful than the other women of the camp, with the possible exception of Flower. Tree smiled to himself. He did not think this would make the life of the new slave any easier.

Tree circled about the camp, for what reason Brenda Hamilton did not understand. She thought that perhaps it was customary to enter it from a given direction. But if that were so why had he approached it from the opposite direction? It did not occur to her at that time that the difference was an important one for Tree, and other. Hunters, the direction of the wind.

Soon she heard shouts in the camp, the cries of children and women.

Then, to her surprise, Tree took her in his arms and lowered her to the ground. Then, from his pouch, he took a length of rawhide, similar to that which now so tightly confined her wrists, some eighteen inches in length, and crossed and tied her ankles, tightly. She looked up at him. He then removed his rope from her neck, and, carefully, looped it about his body.

He looked down at her.

His pouch was slung at his side, the rope was looped about his body, some four times, from the right shoulder to the left hip. His spear, hafted, the flint point bound in the shaft with rawhide, lay beside him on the grass.

His legs were long and powerful and bronzed. He wore a brief skin about his waist. His belly was fiat and hard, his chest large, his shoulders broad, his arms long and muscular. He had a large head. About his neck there was a tangle of leather and claws. His dark hair, black, jagged, was cut back from his eyes, and cut, too, roughly, at the base of his neck.

Brenda Hamilton looked up at her master.

Then, lightly, he picked her up, and threw her over his shoulder.

He bent down and picked up his spear, and turned toward the camp.

The shouting, and the cries, were much louder now.

Brenda Hamilton would not be permitted to enter the camp on her own feet, even wrists bound, and tethered.

She would be carried, trussed, over the threshold of the camp, as meat or game.

She would be thrown to its ground at the feet of the skinning poles.

She was slave.

Brenda Hamilton, bound hand and foot, was carried lightly, helplessly, into the camp, over the shoulder of Tree, the Hunter.

She became aware of men, and women and children, crowding about her.

She was aware of huts, and smells.

She was aware of two sets of poles, one set consisting of two upright poles and several small, slender poles, lashed horizontally between them, from which hung strips of drying meat; the other set consisting of two crossed poles at each end, bound together at the top, with a lateral pole set in the joinings of the end poles; from this lateral pole, on the one set of poles, there hung, upside down, hind feet stretched and bound to the pole, a small deer, its head dangling peculiarly, its throat opened. There was dried blood matted in the white fur at the bottom of its head, beneath its mouth.

Tree stopped with his prize before this latter set of poles, from which hung the deer, which had had its throat cut, that the hunters might have the blood.

Brenda Hamilton was conscious of the ease with which she was carried, that she was so slight a burden for his strength, and of his arm, bronzed and muscular, holding her on his shoulder.

Tree stood with his prize before the skinning rack, to which is brought meat, and game, and slaves.

Over his shoulder, head down, Brenda Hamilton felt the inhabitants of the encampment press about her, eager, excited, talking, curious, commenting, speculating, some feeling her body and hair. Then she felt Tree’s body stiffen. And the crowd of women, children and men, fell back, and was silent.

Someone, she knew, had approached.

She heard voices.

“Where have you been?” asked Spear.

“I have been hunting,” said Tree.

“What have you caught?” asked Spear.

“This,” said Tree.

Rudely Brenda Hamilton, bound hand and foot, was thrown to the dirt of the camp, at the foot of the skinning rack.