“The hunt is done,” said a man.
“It always feeds at the end of the hunt,” said a fellow.
“Blood will tip the scale,” said a man.
“How long does she have?” asked Genak.
“It depends on the animal,” said the leader.
The beast had turned away from me. It could not see me. Was this not my opportunity? Would there be another? I turned about, and fled toward the river. I heard a scrambling in the dirt behind me, and stopped suddenly, almost falling, for the beast was now before me, between me and the river, head down, snarling.
“It is going to feed!” I heard.
Someone screamed, perhaps Tula.
“Back away, slowly,” called the leader, soothingly. “Return to where the sleen found you, where you were before, exactly. I recommend you kneel there, and remain extremely quiet.”
“It is fortunate he did not stop her by cutting or tearing her, and smell or taste blood,” said Genak.
“That would have been the end of things,” said a man.
I now knelt where, and as, I had been told.
“You disobeyed,” said the leader.
“Forgive me, Master,” I whispered.
“What you did was stupid and foolish,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
“She is a barbarian, Master,” said Tula. “She knows no better.”
“If you try to rise to your feet now,” said the leader to me, “the beast may well attack.”
“How much time does she have?” asked a man.
“Very little, I would suppose,” said the leader.
“There is one way to make sure of one’s prey,” said a man.
“Certainly, kill it,” said another.
“See the beast,” said a fellow.
It was crouched down, trembling, ears back, the tail lashing back and forth. Clearly it was growing excited. My bolting had apparently ignited or stirred the whole animal.
“She should not have run,” said a man.
“See the beast,” said another. “It will not be long now.”
“The hunt is done, it wants to feed,” said another.
“Training is fragile,” said a man. “Blood will have its way.”
“Kill it, Master, I beg of you!” called Donna.
“Be silent,” he said.
“Please, Master!” she wept.
“This beast is a prize animal,” he said. “It is worth five, perhaps ten, of her.”
“Please,” she cried.
“This is a worthless piece of collar meat,” he said, “sleen prey, thus a fled kajira. To see her torn to pieces will be an excellent example for other slaves.”
She sank to her knees, weeping.
Did I think I was still on Earth? I was only a Gorean slave girl. In the market I would be worth far less than such a beast.
“It tenses!” whispered a man.
I bent down quickly and put my head down to the dirt, and my hands on my head. How can one prepare oneself for the claws, anchored in one’s body, holding one, and then the fangs, mounted in that massive jaw, the tearing and feeding?
Then I heard a man’s voice. I did not recognize it. It spoke softly. “Gently, gently, noble friend,” it said. “Well done, well done! Easy, easy, fellow, the hunt is done. It is over. It is finished, well finished. Are you hungry, friend? Here is meat, much meat!”
“It worked out well,” said Axel. “The foolish barbarian, naive little fool that she is, was picked up by the Panther Girls, as we had hoped. Thus, following her trail, Tiomines led us to our true quarry, those who would spy on Shipcamp.”
“It was a gamble,” I said. “Keep your voice down.”
“The Panther Girls were greedy,” he said. “They could not resist bending down and picking up a coin in the leaves.”
“It was their mistake,” I said.
“Else we might not have made contact with our spies.”
“Surely you recognize that we are prisoners, as much as they,” I said.
“The fugitive is apparently a barbarian.”
“That is my understanding,” I said.
“Barbarians are stupid,” he said.
“Ignorant,” I said. “Not stupid.”
“It is well known,” he said, “that barbarians are selected for stupidity, passion, and beauty.”
“Not at all,” I said. “And I am of the Slavers.”
“Of the Slavers, yes,” he said, “but surely you did not deal with barbarians, but with superior stock, Gorean girls, civilized, intelligent, lovely creatures to be captured, marked, and collared.”
“I have had some dealings with barbarians,” I said. I did not go into these matters. Axel need not know of a strange, gray world, of unusual ships of metal voyaging on dark seas, and secret slave routes. Many hazards were involved. In particular, there were the technology laws of Priest-Kings, and the ruthlessness with which they were enforced. Accordingly, slaves and other materials from the gray world, the Polluted World, must be smuggled to Gor. Such goods were contraband. To be sure, once they were delivered to Gor, no interest seemed to be taken in them, unless they were somehow in contravention of the laws of Priest-Kings. A coffle of a hundred naked, neck-chained beauties from the Polluted World might be marched openly between cities, whereas a small communication device, or a weapon small enough to be held in one hand, capable of emitting small metal projectiles, would court the conflagration of the Flame Death, which some have witnessed, for it is not a myth.
“They are all stupid,” said Axel.
“Not at all,” I said. “Barbarians are selected with several criteria in mind, surely beauty, and helpless responsiveness and passion, but also high intelligence, often quite high intelligence. No one wants a stupid slave. They do not sell well. The intelligent woman is quick to understand what has become of her, that she is now a slave, and must obey instantly and with perfection. It is almost never necessary to beat her, though she understands it will be done to her, and routinely, if she is not fully pleasing to her master. Too, interestingly, the intelligent woman is likely to be much more in touch with her deepest self, her needs, her profound wants and heart, than a stupid woman. The stupid woman often struggles to be what she was told she was, or should be; seldom, in the beginning, does she, the victim and dupe of a mechanistic conditioning program, its unquestioning puppet, dare to open herself to the liberating revelation and discovery of what she truly is. She often strives to perpetrate an externally imposed stereotype rather than acknowledge a reality, often preferring to ignore nature in favor of convention and artifice, often preferring lies to truth, slogans to history, clichés to biology, and ideologies to blood. Who is it who deems reality unlawful? Those who somehow profit from its denial? Why should it be incumbent on a particular form of life to betray itself? We do not ask that of the kaiila or sleen. Who could benefit from the denial of nature but the unnatural, the fearers of nature? To be sure, all, sooner or later, learn their womanhood. The major difference is that the highly intelligent woman of the Polluted World has often arrived on Gor with, so to speak, a collar already on her neck. She wants to be a woman, to be owned, to be at the mercy of men, to be her master’s slave.
“Are not barbarians frigid?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Touch one, and see her squirm, and beg.”
“I suppose it might be nice to have one or another in one’s pleasure garden,” he said.
“I suppose,” I said, “but I have heard they also make nice private slaves, as well. It is said they are commonly devoted.”
“One must beware of caring for a slave,” he said.
“Of course,” I said. How preposterous was such a notion!
“You seem to know something of barbarians,” he said. “How is that possible?”
“I have heard things,” I said.
“I would prefer a Gorean girl,” he said.
“Asperiche?” I asked.
“She might do,” he said. “In any event,” he said, “we have located our spies.”
I glanced to the river, where the prisoners, each bearing two leather sacks of water, dangling from the ends of a curved-branch yoke on their shoulders, were climbing up toward the camp from the river bank. Donna, with her switch, was supervising them.
“For all the good it does us,” I said. “We have been forbidden to leave the camp.”
“They seem to have an interest in them, as well,” said Axel. “I am not sure what it is. It may not be easy to bring them back to Shipcamp.”
“It seems our friends might object,” I admitted.
“Too, it would be difficult to move them,” he said, “as they are close-shackled.”
“A woman’s ankles look well,” I said, “shackled.”
“To be sure,” he said, “but it is difficult, in the light of such impediments, to move prisoners rapidly.”
“The key must be somewhere in the camp,” I said.
“Be at your ease,” he said. “Consider Tiomines.”
“Quite,” I said. The massive brute lay curled about itself, sleeping. Axel could have reached out and touched him. Sometimes sleen can be not only affectionate, but possessive. I suspected it would be worth someone’s life to attack Axel, if Tiomines were about. To be sure, I was not within the shield of those claws and fangs. I wondered if our relative freedom, and even our lives, might not have something to do with the presence of Tiomines, who was not only dangerous, but, happily, valuable.
“Tula is a good cook,” said Axel. “Is Asperiche better?”
“I would suppose not,” I said. “But one can always buy them some instruction.”
“One does not buy a slave for cooking,” said Axel, “but for the furs.”
“Of course,” I said.
“What do you think of the prisoners?” he asked.
“As females?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “They are women, what else?”
“Emerald,” I said, “would sell well, and it is easy to think of Hiza being turned on the block. I do not think Darla and Tuza would do as well.”
“Perhaps not,” said Axel, “but all women have possibilities. Nature has seen to it. Put them in a collar and see what happens.”
It is true that the collar can do wonders for a woman. I thought of Donna, the slave of Genserich, who was the leader of the strangers. How owned she was! What a superb possession!
“What of the others?” asked Axel.
“Tula and Mila,” I said, “are fine stock, even excellent. Either or both might be chained behind a rich man’s palanquin.”
“What of the other,” he asked, “the one they call Vulo?”
It was she on whose scent Tiomines had been set. She was the fugitive from Shipcamp.
“I had not much noticed,” I said.
“It is she whom we sought,” he said.
“I merely accompanied you for the sport, for the pleasure of the hunt,” I said.
“I recall,” he said. “But what do you think of her?”
“She is a barbarian,” I said.
“Even so,” he said.
“I suppose she is passable,” I said.
“You would rate her below Tula and Mila?” he said.
“Tula and Mila are quite good,” I said.
“Of course they are,” he said. “But how would you rate her?”
“Inferior,” I said, “of little interest.”
“You are mad,” he said. “Look closely. See the slave. See what is collared there. Consider the curves of her, the sweetness of the bosom, its small, but delicious amplitudes, scarce concealed within the tunic, the narrowness of the waist, the width of the love cradle, the softness of the shoulders, the rounded forearms, the small wrists, fit for bracelets, the slender thighs, the rounded calves, the trim ankles, can you not see them, too, in shackles? And consider that soft gloss of swirling, dark hair, and the face, framed within it, the exquisiteness of its features, their delicacy, the depth of her eyes, the soft lips, whose attentions a master might command.”
“I suppose she is adequate,” I said.
“I would think so,” said Axel.
“She is a barbarian,” I said.
“That is true,” said Axel.
“And so,” I said, “she is of no interest whatsoever.”
“Certainly she is of some interest,” he said.
“Perhaps to some men,” I said.
“But not to you?”
“Certainly not,” I said.
To be sure, the slave, even unscrubbed and uncombed, even in her soiled, rent tunic, was far different from the frightened girl I had watched being vended months ago in Brundisium. Her posture and carriage were now those of a slave. No longer was there a pound on her which was not well placed. Perhaps a silver tarsk, I thought. Ah, I thought. See her walk past that fellow. She does not even know she is needful. She is restless, and does not even understand it. Or does she, and is she afraid? Does she know that what smolders in her belly are slave fires, put there by men, and that, in time, they will grow, and rage, and she will find herself their prisoner, ready to beg relief from men, in time, from any man? Perhaps a silver tarsk, and, say, twenty copper, or even, perhaps, a bit more, I thought.
The leather sacks of water brought from the river by the prisoners had now been hung on branches at the edge of the camp, and the prisoners were being conducted into the forest, presumably to gather wood for the night fire. They were accompanied by Donna, with her switch, and two men, with spears. We had heard the roar of panthers in the forest.
We watched the coffle disappear in the shadows, accompanied by Donna, and its guards.
“The slaves are going to the river,” said Axel.
“Water has already been fetched,” I said.
“I think,” said Axel, “they are being permitted to bathe, to launder their tunics, or such.”
“They may run,” I said.
“Nonsense,” said Axel. “There is no escape for a kajira. They know that. By now even the barbarian will know that.”
“I hope so,” I said.
Axel looked after the prisoners, who had entered the forest, with their accompaniment, presumably to gather wood.
We heard the roar of a panther, but it was far off. Too, the coffle and Donna, in whose charge it was, were accompanied by two guards.
“I would suppose,” said Axel, “that the prisoners will be collared.”
“Do you doubt it?” I asked.
“I am not sure of it,” he said.
“You think they will be freed?” I asked. It seemed absurd to think of freeing a woman, certainly once you had a chain on her.
“Certainly not,” he said.
“Then?” I said.