'What is it?' she asked.
'You are being abducted,' Harold informed her.
The girl's head flew up and she spun to face him, pulling to free herself. When she saw him her eyes were as wide as larma fruit and her mouth flew open.
'It is I,' said Harold, 'Harold the Tuchuk.'
'No!' she said. 'Not you!'
'Yes,' he said, 'I,' turning her about once again, routinely checking the knots that bound her wrists, taking her wrists in his hands, trying to separate them, examining the knots for slippage; there was none. He permitted her to turn and face him again.
'How did you get in here?' she demanded.
'I chanced by,' said Harold.
She was trying to free herself. After an instant she realized that she could not, that she had been bound by a warrior. Then she acted as though she had not noticed that she had been perfectly secured, that she was his prisoner, the prisoner of Harold of the Tuchuks. She squared her small shoulders and glared up at him.
'What are you doing here?' she demanded.
'Stealing a slave girl,' he said.
'Who?' she asked.
'Oh, come now,' said Harold.
'Not I!' she said.
'Of course,' said he.
'But I am Hereena,' she cried, 'of the First Wagon!' I feared the girl's voice might awaken the others, but they seemed still to sleep.
'You are only a little Turian slave girl,' said Harold, 'who has taken my fancy.'
'Nor' she said.
Then Harold had his hands in her mouth, holding it open. 'See,' he said to me.
I looked. To be sure, there was a slight gap between two of the teeth on the upper right.
Hereena was trying to say something. It is perhaps just as well she could not.
'It is easy to see,' said Harold, 'why she was not chosen First Stake.'
Hereena struggled furiously, unable to speak, the young Tuchuk's hands separating her jaws.
'I have seen kaiila with better teeth,' he said.
Hereena made an angry noise. I hoped that the girl would not burst a blood vessel. Then Harold removed his hands deftly, narrowly missing what would have been a most savage! bite.
'Sleen!' she hissed.
'On the other hand,' said Harold, 'all things considered, she is a not unattractive little wench.'
'Sleen! Sleen!' cursed the girl.
'I shall enjoy owning you,' said Harold, patting her head. 'Sleep! Sleen! Sleen!' cursed the girl.
Harold turned to me. 'She is, is she not all things con sidered a pretty little wench? I could not help but regard the angry, collared Hereena, furious in the swirling Pleasure Silk. 'Yes,' I said, 'very.'
'Do not fret, little Slave Girl,' said Harold to Hereena. 'You will soon be able to serve me and I shall see that you shall do so superbly.'
Irrationally, like a terrified, vicious little animal, Hereena struggled again to free herself.
Harold stood by, patiently, making no attempt to interfere. At last, trembling with rage, she approached him, her back to him, holding her wrists to him. 'Your jest has gone far enough,' she said. 'Free me.'
'No,' said Harold.
'Free me!' commanded the girl.
'No,' said Harold.
She spun to face him again, tears of rage in her eyes. 'No,' said Harold.
She straightened herself. 'I will never go with you,' she hissed. 'Never! Never! Never!'
'That is interesting,' said Harold. 'How do you propose to prevent it?' 'I have a plan,' she said.
'Of course,' he said, 'you are Tuchuk.' He looked at her narrowly. 'What is your plan?'
'It is a simple one,' she responded.
'Of course,' said Harold, 'though you are Tuchuk, you are also female.'
One of Hereena's eyebrows rose skeptically. 'The simplest plans,' she remarked, 'are often the best.'
'Upon occasion,' granted Harold. 'What is your plan?' 'I shall simply scream,' she said.
Harold thought for a moment. 'That is an excellent plan,' he admitted.
'So,' said Hereena, 'free me and I will give you ten Ihn to flee for your lives.'
That did not seem to me like much time. The Gorean Ihn, or second, is only a little longer than the Earth second. Regardless of the standard employed, it was clear that Hereena was not being particularly generous.
'I do not choose to do so,' remarked Harold.
She shrugged. 'Very well,' she said.
'I gather you intend to put your plan into effect,' said Harold.
'Yes,' she said.
'Do so,' said Harold.
She looked at him for a moment and then put back her head and sucked in air and then, her mouth open, prepared to utter a wild scream.
My heart nearly stopped but Harold, at the moment just before the girl could scream, popped one of the scarves into her mouth, wadding it Up and shoving it between her teeth. Her scream was only a muffled noise, hardly more than escaping air.
'I, too,' Harold informed her, 'had a plan a counter- plan.'
He took one of the two remaining scarves and bound it across her mouth holding the first scarf well inside her mouth.
'My plan,' said Harold, 'which I have now put into effect, was clearly superior to yours.'
Hereena made some muffled noises. Her eyes regarded him wildly over the colored scarf and her entire body began to squirm savagely.
'Yes,' said Harold, 'clearly superior.'
I was forced to concede his point. Standing but five feet away I could barely hear the tiny, angry noises she made. Harold then lifted her from her feet and, as I winced, simply dropped her on the floor. She was, after all, a slave. She said something that sounded like 'Ooof,' when she hit the floor. He then crossed her ankles, and bound them tightly with the remaining scarf.
She glared at him in pained fury over the colored scarf. He scooped her up and put her over his shoulder. I was forced to admit that he had handled the whole affair rather neatly.
In n short while Harold, carrying the struggling Hereena, and I had retraced our steps to the central hall and descend- ed the steps of the porch and returned by means of the curving walks between the shrubs and pools to the flower tree by means of which we had originally entered the Pleasure Gardens of Saphrar of Turia.
'By now,' said Harold, 'guardsmen will have searched the roofs, so it should be safe to proceed across them to our destination.'
'And where is that?' I asked.
'Wherever the tarns happen to be,' he responded.
'Probably,' I said, 'on the highest roof of the highest building in the House of Saphrar.'
'That would be,' suggested Harold, 'the keep.'
I agreed with him. The keep, in the private houses of Goreans, is most often a round, stone tower, built for de- fense, containing water and food. It is difficult to fire from the outside, and the roundness like the roundness of Gorean towers in general tends to increase the amount of oblique hits from catapult stones.
Making our way up the Dower tree with Hereena, who fought like a young she-larl, was not easy. I went part way up the tree and was handed the girl, and then Harold would go up above me and I would hoist her up a way to him, and then I would pass him, and so on. Occasionally, to my irritation, we became entangled in the trailing, looped stems of the tree, each with its richness of clustered flowers, whose beauty I was no loner in a mood to appreciate. At lust we got Hereena to the top of the tree.
'Perhaps,' puffed Harold, 'you would like to go back and get another wench one for yourself?'
'No,' I said.
'Very well,' he said.
Although the wall was several feet from the top of the tree ~ managed, by springing on one of the curved branches, to build up enough spring pressure to leap to where I could get my fingers over the edge of the wall. I slipped with one hand and hung there, feet scraping the wall, some fifty feet from the ground, for a nasty moment, but then managed to get both hands on the edge of the wall and hoist myself up. 'Be careful,' advised Harold.
I was about to respond when I heard a stifled scream of horror and saw that Harold had hurled Hereena in my direction, across the space between the tree and the wall. I managed to catch her. She was now covered with a cold sweat and was trembling with terror. Perched on the wall, holding the girl with one hand to prevent her tumbling off, I watched Harold springing up and down and then he was leaping towards me. He, too, slipped, as I was not displeased to note, but our hands met and he was drawn to safety. 'Be careful,' I advised him, attempting not to let a note of triumph permeate my admonition.
'Quite right,' wheezed Harold, 'as I myself earlier pointed out»
I considered pushing him off the wall, but, thinking of the height, the likelihood of breaking his neck and back and such, and consequently thereby complicating our measures for escape, I dismissed the notion as impractical, however tempting.
'Come along,' he said, flinging Hereena across his shout- ders like a thigh of bask meat, and starting along the wall. We soon came, to my satisfaction, to an easily accessible, flat roof and climbed onto it. Harold laid Hereena down on the roof to one side and sat cross-legged for a minute, breathing heavily. I myself was almost
