A quick look around the tent room showed me nothing I could use, not even a piece of cloth for clothing. Aside from the cool of the night the thought of walking around bare didn’t bother me, but it would make me somewhat conspicuous. I’d intended going after one of those guards for his sword, but now it looked like I’d need his clothes, too. It would take more time than I really wanted to spend, but there was no help for it. I couldn’t run around the woods of Narella bare, not when there was no telling when that scout ship would pick me – “What haye you done, slave?” came the demanding voice from behind me, causing me to turn my head in that direction. My golden-shirt stood there, something that looked like a thin, rattan cane in his hand, a frown of disbelief on his face. Bellna shivered in fear in the corner she crouched in, but all I did was smile faintly. I’d done a stupid thing not leaving that room as soon as the chains were off, but I knew I’d done it deliberately. I’d been hoping to run into my goldenshirt again-and now I had.
“You mistake me, man,” I said as I stepped farther into the center of the room. “I am no slave, and therefore did as I wished to do.”
“You believe you are no longer a slave due to someone’s having taken the chains from you?” he asked, that superior amusement clear on his face. “The absence of chains does not make one free. Kneel!”
The snap of command in his voice made Bellna blubbet in my head and try to obey, but I was riding a high too far above her to feel the same myself. Revenge is usually a pastime for the immature, but that slob had done more than just put his hands on me. You have to be a damned fool or suicidal to treat a Special Agent the way he had treated me, and I was in no mood to be forgiving or generous.
“You are correct in believing that the absence of chains does not make one free,” I agreed, enjoying the frown he’d grown when I didn’t fall quivering to my knees. “I am prepared to leave this place now, and will give you the opportunity to step out of my way.”
“Will you indeed,” he said, the superiority back again. “How very thoughtful of a slave to give her master such an opportunity. The master, however, does not choose to accept the generosity of his slave. He will, instead, choose to give his slave a sounder whipping than she was to have received. The choice is ever the master’s, a thing you will now learn beyond all doubt.”
He took a firmer grip on the cane he held and started toward me, his arm half raised and ready to strike. He took his time coming forward, giving me the chance to understand just how bad a mistake I’d made before getting on with the beating. There was faint disturbance in his eyes over the fact that I just stood there waiting for him, but I doubt whether he was capable of understanding that I didn’t intend allowing myself to be beaten. Being very used to dealing with slaves is more dangerous than slavers seem to realize; it makes prime victims of them if they happen to tangle with a non-slave.
The golden-shirt reached me and raised his arm higher, then brought the cane whistling down toward my bare body. It would have struck my shoulder if I’d stayed where I was, but I stepped forward instead and brought up a left-handed block against his forearm. Most people think of blocks as being strictly defensive maneuvers – that is, if they’ve never had one used on them. The force of the block knocked the cane out of my opponent’s hand; as it hit I was already going to one knee and launching a right from belt level directly into his groin, then moving fast to get out of the way. It wasn’t retaliation I was expecting but reaction, and that came so fast it might have been programmed. The blood left golden shirt’s face, and even as he began folding up he was already vomiting, spasming out the terrible pain he felt. I straightened up beside him, stiffened my right hand, then clipped him good at the base of the skull, sending him sprawling into the pool of vomit he’d made. I took a split second to consider whether or not to finish him permanently, then turned away and headed for the room exit when I decided against it. It would be a long time before the man was able to function again, not to mention chasing after me. If I wasn’t gone out of there before then, his being up and around would not make the difference.
I slid out into the empty corridor between rooms and moved without sound, checking each room before I passed it. Muffled sounds came from a room down at the far end, but aside from that everything was quiet. A couple of the rooms held sleeping female forms, but the rest were empty. I became aware of Bellna as I moved down the corridor, and I had to chuckle softly. The intruder in my mind was still in shock, trying to figure out what had happened. She had been so terribly afraid of the golden-shirt that she would have done anything to appease him, but three simple blows had taken him out of the picture more effectively than Fallan’s fistfight had done with the house guard at the inn. She knew nothing about self defense and offense, considering the entire area reserved to those with big, bulging muscles or superior weapons. She couldn’t get over the fact that she had done something like that, and so simply. She was beginning to think of that store of extra knowledge as magic, the store she couldn’t always reach; I thought about all the hard work I’d put in acquiring it, but chuckled anyway. It was magic to someone who didn’t know about it, and the hard work part of it just didn’t enter into it.
When I reached the end of the corridor, I found that the muffled sounds were screams that were coming from the room opposite the one that led out of that section of tents. The room out was dim and deserted, and no one would have seen me go that way; all I had to do was step into the room and cross it, then melt into the darkness outside. There had to be armed guards moving around out there, and jumping one from behind would be a piece of cake. I didn’t know what was causing those muffled screams across the way, and in any event it was none of my business. Getting out of there was my business, that and dressing and arming myself, and heading off south into the woods.
I took a step into the room, and then a second and then turned and ghosted fast across the corridor.
From right outside the flap separating the corridor from the room I could hear sounds other than the muffled screaming; grunting and heavy breathing came through, as well as a faint creaking. I moved the flap over a very little bit and slipped inside, but I could have made considerably more noise and still wouldn’t have been noticed. A female slave with scraps of green on her was chained to a wooden contraption that bent her backward and spread her wide, an open invitation without need of a sign. A thick length of yellow cloth blindfolded her, and a fat wad of yellow cloth was stuffed in her mouth, gagging her effectively yet allowing those muffled screams to escape. The dark-goldshirted guard stood with his sword on the floor beside him and his pants down around his knees, bracing himself with one hand on the wooden frame while he thrust down at the chained woman with his body, ramming her deep and increasing the sound of her muffled screams. His other hand was closed painfully tight on one of her breasts, and as I dropped the door flap he grunted one last time with attained release.
“You provided a barely adequate ride, slave,” he muttered, resting a minute against the woman’s body. “It matters not how many were before me; the ride should have been fully satisfying. Though you were placed here due to your lacks in pleasing your masters, you have apparently learned nothing. It seems I must recommend that you be kept here another day, so that the lesson might be effective. Your pain is of no consequence whatsoever; your master’s pleasure is all.
As I have received little pleasure, you will also be beaten. Though there is little likelihood of your attaining perfection, the beating will assist you in approaching it more closely.”
The guard withdrew from the woman then, not giving a damn that she was now crying behind her blindfold and gag. He turned half away from her and reached down for his pants, saw me standing there, and straightened with a frown.
“What do you do in here, slave?” he demanded, then narrowed his eyes.
“Who has removed the chains from you without ordering you to remain where you were? Or for what reason have they ordered you here?”
He really didn’t understand what was going on, and the provocative smile I gave him didn’t help any. I began moving toward him in a slow, deliberately sexy way, my hips swinging and my breasts thrust out, and the confusion on his face suddenly became a leer.
“You have been sent to give me a proper ride!” he said in a pouncing tone, sure he’d solved the mystery. “I know not which of my brothers sees so carefully to my needs, yet I shall learn his identity from you and give him proper thanks. You will first reawaken me, and then will I make full use of you. The gods themselves would condemn me, were I to do less.”
From the way his eyes moved over me, I was surprised he wasn’t standing in slobber clear up to his neck. Bellna felt a sharp stab of desire when he used the words “full use,” and her passing it on to me nearly threw my timing off. I’d been waiting for him to bend toward his pants again, if only in order to get them out of the way so he could close the gap between us faster, but he started to bend while my muscles were still tightening in protest. It was pure luck that he kept his head up to watch me as he bent, and I couldn’t afford to throw that luck away. Despite the throbbing in my loins I forced myself to run three steps and then jump- kick for power, the ball of my right foot striking the son just under his chin. His head snapped back even harder than his body did, the crack coming before he slammed into the wooden contraption the woman was chained to. He bounced off, fell to the floor, then lay there in a very still, angular way.
I moved up to him fast and bent to check for a pulse, but that was just part of my habit of always making sure. I knew I’d broken his neck with the kick, and he hadn’t survived as a fluke in spite of it.
The woman on the frame was stirring in her chains and making babbling noises around her gag, but I’d done all I could for her. The guard would never make another sadistic recommendation, and leaving her chained up would guarantee that she would not be blamed for his death. If freeing her had meant that she would escape to freedom I would have taken the time to unchain her, but despite all wishful thinking it would have meant nothing of the kind. She wouldn’t have been able to get herself away and I couldn’t take her with me, but all the same I kept my eyes away from her as I worked the dead guard free of his clothes.
I kept expecting to be interrupted, but I got the shirt and pants on and buckled on the swordbelt, and no one came in. The clothes fit as well as a man’s clothes will fit on a woman just about his size, but the boots had proved impossible. They were much too big to be of use, and would have been more of a hazard than going bare-foot would be. I resettled the swordbelt around my hips, took one last glance around the room, and then walked out. Usual good-byes are fatuous; in that instance they would have been insane.
The corridor and exit room were still both empty, but I didn’t understand why until I’d moved through the dark toward the main exhibition tent. The noise coming from that tent and two others of a similar size near it was incredible in the midst of the forest quiet, speaking of crowds much larger than those that had been present while I was on a platform. I still made sure to move silently through the chilly darkness, staying out of the wide pools of light thrown by the big, flickering torches set all around the three main tents. Armed guards moved around and through the streams of people going in and out of the tents, watching, directing, and generally being very visible. The slavers had a booming business going, larger than one princedom could account for. It was a safe bet that people were coming from all over, making however long a trip was necessary to check out what was being offered. As I stood behind a tree watching, one round-bellied man with three burly assistants took possession of a group of eight slave females and two slave males, his brusque, businesslike manner showing that he was probably replenishing his own stock. The retailer buying from the wholesaler, so to speak, calculating his future profit even as his merchandise was growled and prodded into motion. When I discovered that my left hand gripped so tightly the hilt of the sword I wore that my fingernails were digging into my palm, I knew it was time to get moving-before I did something stupid. You can’t change a world all by yourself, no matter how much you’d like to give it a whirl.
I faded back from the tree and moved around some tall bushes, heading toward the outlying tents of the widespread camp, trying to be careful of where I stepped. Small twigs and branches had already gotten me a couple of times, making me decide to keep alert for any vair that might have been left standing around. Traveling by vair-back would be faster and easier than going on foot, especially on bare foot. Being free and on the move felt good, despite the direction the Bellna presence’s thoughts had taken. The first sight of the display tent had brought back memory of Fallan to her, and the little girl in my head was trying to decide how she felt about him.
It wasn’t that she no longer had the raging hots for him; what he’d done to me in the display tent had, if anything, intensified her feelings. What bothered her was the fact that Fallan had chosen the black-haired girl instead of me to use, the idea sending jealous, flaring anger through my head. She chewed at the thought for a couple of minutes, spoiled-brat resentment boiling around, and then she remembered that light-shirt hadn’t let Fallan use me. The interpretation wasn’t strictly true, but Bellna wasn’t looking for truth, only a reason to forgive Fallan. When she found one she began humming happily to herself, more than ready to fantasize about what it would have been like with Fallan if light-shirt hadn’t interfered.
I ignored the fantasizing and paid attention to where I was going, looking for something speedier to ride than the dashing Captain Fallan.
There were considerably fewer people around the outskirts of the camp, but most of them were guards and armed. The breeze tossed the flames of their torches around, but the illumination did nothing to pinpoint the