“He is a spy,” said a fellow. “Kill him.”
Torgus drew his weapon.
“We do not know he is a spy,” said the fellow who might once have worn the scarlet.
“He is a spy,” said Torgus.
“If so,” said the fellow, “better to hold him, to bind him, and keep him for questioning.”
“Yes,” said Torgus, “that is best.”
“Who will bring the rope?” I asked.
I stood within the ring.
“He has drawn!” said a fellow.
“I did not see it,” said another.
“He is of the Warriors,” said a man.
Those of the scarlet are trained in such a draw. One does not indicate that one will draw. One does not glance at the hilt. One does not tense. One’s attention seems elsewhere, and the eyes of others will follow. The hand is not noticed. It is, I suppose, in a way similar to a magician’s sleight of hand. And then, surprisingly one notes that the weapon is free.
“Ho!” cried a voice, from the edge of the forest.
I had been right.
I could see some fellows amongst the trees.
Attention was then directed upon the newcomers. I stepped back, a little, amongst the fellows on the beach. The new arrivals might have noticed the semblance of a dispute on the sand, but such things might be common amongst fee fighters, rough men, fierce, and dangerous, undisciplined. Such men often adjudicate disagreements with steel. I was not in the scarlet. I might be, for all the newcomers knew, another of the fellows whom they had come to meet. How, at least for a few moments, would they know otherwise?
I sheathed my blade.
“I would leave, if I were you,” said the fellow next to me, who had drifted back with me. It was he whom I had thought might once have been of the Warriors. I supposed he might have murdered a man, or betrayed a Home Stone, some such thing. It seemed strange to me that he should be with these other fellows.
“My thanks,” I said.
But I did not move.
His accent seemed Cosian.
Mine he could probably not place.
Port Kar, of course, was at war with Cos, but that does not mean one had to keep it constantly in mind. There is a time to kill, a time to play kaissa, a time to share paga, a time to do business, a time to exchange slaves, and so on. As warriors are not politicians, their truces are frequent, their salutations genuine.
Besides, he might not be of Cos.
Many of the islands to the west had similar accents.
I moved forward a little.
One of the newcomers, he in advance of his cohorts, stepped forward, and lifted his hand, addressing Torgus, who had come forward, to meet him.
“Tal,” he said.
Torgus returned this greeting.
There might have been twenty fellows with the newcomer. Behind them, back in the trees, I saw seven or eight briefly tunicked slaves. Some carried poles, with coiled ropes. Such poles could be used for portering, the baggage fastened to them by the ropes. Sometimes captured panther girls, small bands of which occasionally roamed hundreds of pasangs to the south, were slung from such poles. They were bound, hand and feet, by their captors, to the poles, as might have been slain or captured panthers, the beasts from which they derive their name. They are fastened to the poles in such a way that they dangle, swinging, from them, their bellies to the pole, their backs to the ground. The poles are carried by female slaves, a great insult to the panther girl for they despise female slaves. And she does not know, of course, to what fate she is being carried. When they are returned to civilization, the captured panther girls, most of whom suffer from repressed sexuality, are stripped, branded, and collared, and taught their womanhood. They sell well, and some men seek them out, in the taverns. Wonders, it is said, may be wrought in such women by a switch, and a master’s hand. Supposedly they make superb slaves. And once the slave fires have been ignited in their bellies, they are, of course, as helpless, and needful, as any other slave.
”
”
Several of the fellows on the beach looked uneasily at one another. There was little, as far as we knew, beyond Tyros and Cos, some small islands, of course, usually spoken of as the Farther Islands, but nothing else, lest it be the World’s End, the edge of the sea, supposedly the plunge into the abyss, nothing.
Few ships, as far as I knew, had ventured west of the Farther Islands, and of those, as far as I knew, none had returned.
Thassa, it seemed, might be jealous of her secrets.
I moved forward. “Tal,” I said to the newcomer.
“Tal,” he said.
I had addressed him familiarly. This seemed to convince even Torgus that I knew him, and the newcomer supposed, as I had supposed he would, that I was one of the others, though perhaps one a bit more indiscreet or forward than might have been desirable.
The newcomers were nicely organized, and, in moments, much of the baggage had been lashed to the poles, and the briefly tunicked slaves shouldered the poles with the suspended cargo, and stood ready to depart. They were a good looking set of slaves, and the brevity of their tunics, which is a feature of such garments, left few of their charms to speculation. They stood very straight, but with the grace that is expected of a slave. Clumsiness, awkwardness, stiffness, and such, are not permitted to slaves; they are not free women. I noted that the slaves stole glances at several of the fellows on the beach. They knew they might be given to them. I went behind one of the women, at the aft end of a pole, and carefully turned her collar. She remained absolutely still. The collar was plain. I adjusted it then so that the lock was again at the back of the neck, where it belongs. I had learned nothing.
I then, in order to make myself useful, put the fifteen neck-chained girls, who had arrived on the ship, to their feet, and arranged them in a line, one behind the other. I gathered they had been marched in something like this order before, because of the gradations of height. I put the tallest girl in front, as that is the usual way the slavers arrange their “beads.” I then distributed several of the smaller packages, which had been left free, doubtless deliberately, amongst them, the heaviest to the taller, larger girls. Indeed, precisely fifteen such packages had been left, not attached to the poles borne by the fair porters come from the forest. Surely this was not a matter of coincidence. The new girls, too, then, were to carry burdens, perhaps their first.
“Place the boxes on your head,” I told them, “steadying them with both hands.”
This is a common way in which Gorean slave girls, and, indeed, free women of lower castes, carry boxes, baskets, bundles, and such. This form of lading is particularly lovely in the case of female slaves because the hands are thus fixed in position over their heads, almost as though chained, and the breasts are nicely lifted. Too, they then know themselves, as much as pack kaiila, bearing the burdens of men.
In moments the leader of the fellows from the forest had set out amongst the trees. A march then followed him, first his own men, then the portering slaves, with their poles and baggage, and then Torgus, and the fellows from the ship, and then, bringing up the rear, a lovely coffle, fifteen shapely pack beasts, the girls from the ship.
I thought they looked well on their chain, bearing their burdens.
Then the chain, at the edge of the forest, stopped.
I suspected it was terrified to enter that gloom.
And it was not being supervised. There was no master or switch slave behind them.
That was interesting, I thought.
