“Desmond is a fine leader, one of intelligence, power, and honor,” said Grendel.
“He puts me in a cage when it pleases him,” I said. “If he owned me, I have little doubt but what I would be well corded, well roped, and chained.”
“I take it you hate him,” said Grendel.
“Yes!” I said.
“And how is it then,” he asked, “that you love him?”
“I, love?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“On Earth,” I said, “I did not love. I did not know what love was. But here, with a collar fastened on my neck, I know.”
“You love Desmond of Harfax,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“With the love of a free woman?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I love him with the most profound and deepest love a woman can know. I love him with the love of a helpless, yielding slave for her master.”
“Tomorrow, at the Ninth Ahn,” said Grendel, “I am to be taken from the Cave and executed. Perhaps you might leave the Cave a few Ehn before the Ninth Ahn and walk to the Sixth Ahn.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“There is no escape for you, of course,” he said. “If you were not caught, you would die of cold, or be eaten by animals.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“You would be well advised to return promptly,” he said. “You might not even be missed. If you returned soon, and of your own accord, you might not even be switched.”
“There are guards,” I said.
“They might not be observant,” he said. “In any event, they are not likely to leave their post.”
“Why should I do this?” I asked.
“Perhaps you thought to run, and then wisely changed your mind,” he said.
“Master?” I said, puzzled.
“Remember,” he said, “walk to the Sixth Ahn.”
“How can I walk for so many Ahn,” I asked, “if I leave before the Ninth Ahn?”
“You will only have to walk a little,” he said, “only a few Ehn.”
“To the Sixth Ahn?” I said.
“Precisely,” he said.
“I understand nothing of this,” I said.
“It is better that you do not,” he said.
At this point the two guards entered the outer chamber. Shortly thereafter I removed the tray, the plate, and tankard from the cell.
Chapter Forty-Five
Shortly before the Ninth Ahn, I was in the large hall, leading to the great portal. I moved very carefully, my back to the wall on the left, as one would approach the great portal from the inside. I was several yards from the opening. One of the guards turned, regarded me for a moment, and then turned back, to his fellow. Shortly thereafter, some yards back from the opening, two slave girls, Jane and Eve, began pushing one another, and screaming at one another. In a moment, they were rolling on the floor of the hall, seemingly intent on tearing out one another’s hair, seemingly clawing at one another like embroiled she-sleen, while the male crouched nearby, waiting to pull the victor to his burrow by the fur at the back of the neck. The two guards turned about, to watch the sobbing, screaming, seemingly tearing, seemingly scratching slaves. Altercations amongst slave girls can be nasty things. Kurii, and, I fear, some men, find them amusing.
I slipped through the portal, unnoticed. I was frightened. I had crossed the threshold, without permission. In theory I knew I could be lashed, hamstrung, or slain. Mina was to have been fed alive to Kurii until Trachinos had intervened with coin, purchasing her.
I looked about, wildly.
I normally told Gorean time by the ringing of the bars, often public bars, but sometimes bars within a house. Grendel, however, in the domicile, had taught me to read time from the small chronometer he kept in his pouch. He doubtless would have recalled that he had done this. That was undoubtedly important. In the night I had pondered his strange words, about walking to the Sixth Ahn. Clearly, as he had told me to walk for only some Ehn, he had not meant that I should try to walk for several Ahn, until it was again the Sixth Ahn, almost a day later. What then could be meant? I was unfamiliar with Gorean directions, which I found complex, and, in any event, I not only lacked a compass, but would not have been able to read one if I had had one. I did know that the Gorean compass needle always pointed to the Sardar Mountains. It seemed clear then, upon reflection, that Grendel had given me a direction in which to proceed. It was also clear that he took it for granted that I would understand him. His confidence in this matter, although flattering, was not obviously warranted. Various difficulties obtained. I thought of time in terms of the bars, and not chronometers. I was not all that familiar with Gorean chronometers, and his casual lesson in the domicile had been brief. I tried to remember it. Most dangerously the chronometers with which I was familiar on my former world not only divided the day differently, but marked the divisions in a different order. On my former world the hands of chronometers begin to rotate to the right, whereas in your chronometers they begin to rotate to the left. Your concept of “clockwise” is thus opposite to that with which I was familiar. When I thought of Gorean time, as it might be measured by a chronometer, I always thought of it analogously to the chronometers of my former world; thus, in my mind I would think of the Fifth Ahn as to the right of the Twentieth Ahn, rather than, as you would think of it, as to the left of the Twentieth Ahn. Grendel, of course, would be thinking in terms of the Gorean chronometer. Accordingly, if a large Gorean chronometer had been placed flat before the great portal, and one was to move toward the Sixth Ahn one would go to the left and not the right. In any event, I sped from the portal, aligning myself with where the imaginary Sixth Ahn would lie.
I heard no cry, or roar from behind me, and so I supposed the attention of the guards might still be focused on the amusing spectacle of two squabbling slave girls.
The terrain was uneven and treacherous.
There were many rocks, and crevices about, and narrow passageways between boulders and out-juttings. In places ascending and descending narrow ledges skirted cliff-like projections. Here and there there were spears of stone. The morning sun would be bright before me, on rock, and then, in a moment, one would confront almost impenetrable, cave-like shadows, indicating recesses of an undisclosed depth. In such a place anything might hide. Occasionally, from a high place, I looked back, to see the great portal. I tried to keep the direction, I hoped it was correct, which I understood Grendel to have given me. I recalled I had seen a larl from the great portal once, perhaps one at much this distance from the Cave. I swallowed, and continued on. My feet hurt, for I had no sandals. Too, camisked, I began to shiver. I nearly slipped into a crevice, but pressed myself against the rock, and, bit by bit, made my way forward. Mighty boulders were scattered about, some jagged, and young, and some worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Might the knives of expanding ice in fissures have broken loose stones, some like small mountains? I wondered if, in its long past, the Voltai had witnessed the passage of oceans of ice at its feet, oceans which might bear ships of stone. I wondered what forces might have given birth to the mighty Voltai.
I hurried about a boulder, turning, and screamed in terror, for I had plunged into the outstretched arms of a large, hairy shape, which clutched me to itself, its nostrils dilating and closing, and dilating and closing again, sucking in scent from about my neck and shoulders. A massive paw closed over my mouth. I could barely squirm. Then, gently, it released me, and I stepped back. There was no mistaking the seared pockets of tissue marking where once large, glistening eyes had glowed.
“You are alive!” I said.
It could not understand me, of course, for it had no translator. But it might have detected something of the shock and amazement in my voice. Certainly it was familiar with the sounds humans made, from its captors, from
