I smiled.
I carefully fitted the black, steel-piled temwood shaft to the string. I lifted the great bow of yellow Ka-la-na, from the wine trees of Gor.
There was a sudden cry of pain from the green and the sunlight and shadows. I had her!
I sped forward.
In almost an instant I was on her.
She had been pinned to a tree by the shoulder. Her eyes were glazed. She had her hand at her shoulder. When she saw me, she clutched, with her right hand, at the sleen knife in her belt. She was blond, blue-eyed. There was blood on her hair. I knocked the sleen knife from her hand and rudely jerked her hands together before her body, securing them there with slave bracelets. She was gasping. Some six inches of the arrow, five inches feathered, protruded from her shoulder. I cut away the halter she wore and improvised a gag, that she might not cry out. With a length of binding fiber, taken from her own pouch, I tied the slave bracelets tight against her belly. I stepped back. This panther girl would warn no others. She would not interfere with the plans of Bosk, of Port Kar. She faced me, in pain, gagged, her fists in slave bracelets, held at her belly. I stripped her of her skins, and pouch and weapons. She was mine. I noted that she was comely.
I strode to her and, as her eyes cried out with pain, snapped off the arrow. I lifted her from the cruel pinion. She fell to her knees. Now, the arrow gone, her two wounds began to bleed. She shuddered. I would permit some blood to wash from the wound, cleaning it.
I snapped of the rest of the arrow, and, with a knife, shaved it to the tree, that it might not attract attention. The girl’s pouch, its contents, and her weapons, I threw into the brush.
Then I knelt beside her and, with those skins I had taken from her, bound her wound.
With my foot I skuffed dirt over the stains on the ground, where she had bled. I then lifter her lightly in my arms and carried her, gagged and bound, down our back trail, for some quarter of an Ahn.
When I was satisfied that I had carried her sufficiently far, so far that I was confident that she would not be within earshot of any to whom she might wish to call, I set her down on the ground, leaning her against a tree.
She was sick from her wound, and loss of blood. She had fainted as I had carried her. Now she was conscious, and sat, leaning against the tree, her eyes glazed, regarding me.
I pulled down her gag, letting it hang about her neck.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Grenna,” she said.
“Where is the camp and dancing circle of Verna, the panther girl?” I asked. She looked at me, sick, puzzled. “I do not know,” she whispered.
Something in the girl’s manner convinced me that she spoke the truth. I was not much pleased.
This portion of the forest was supposedly the territory of Verna, and her band. I gave the girl some food from my pouch. I gave her a swallow of water from the flask at my belt.
“Are you not of Verna’s band?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Of whose band are you?” I asked.
“Of Hura’s,” said she.
“This portion of the forest,” I told her, “is the territory of Verna and her band.” “It will be ours,” she said.
I withheld the water flask.
“We have more than a hundred girls,” she said. “It will be ours.”
I gave her another swallow of water.
“It will be ours,” she said.
I was puzzled. Normally panther girls move and hunt in small bands. That there should be more than a hundred of them in a single band, under a single leader, seemed incredible.
I did not much understand this.
“You are a scout?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“How far are you in advance of your band?” I asked.
“Pasangs,” she said.
“What will be thought when you do not return to your band?” I asked. “Who knows what to think?” she said. “Sometimes a girl does not come back.” Her lips formed the word. I gave her more water. She had lost blood. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Be silent,” I said.
It now seemed to me even more important to locate, as swiftly as possible, Verna’s camp or its dancing circle.
Soon, perhaps within two or three days, more panther girls might be entering this portion of the forests.
We must act quickly.
I looked at the sun. it was low now, sunk among the trees.
In another Ahn or two, it would be dark.
I wished to find Verna’s camp, if possible, before nightfall.
There was no time to carry this prisoner back to where Rim, and my men, and Arn, and his men, waited for me. It would be dark before I could do so, and return. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
I took the gag, from where I had pulled it down about her throat, and refixed it, securely.
I then reknotted the binding fiber from where it was fastened, behind the small of her back, and also unknotted it, in front, from the chain of the slave bracelets. I put the binding fiber in my belt. I then unlocked the left slave bracelet.
“Climb,” I told her, indicating a nearby tree.
She stood, unsteadily. She shook her head. She was weak. She had lost blood. “Climb,” I told her, “or I shall bracelet you on the ground.” Slowly she climbed, branch by branch, I following her.
“Keep climbing,” I told her.
At last she was more than thirty feet from the ground. She was frightened. “Edge out on the limb,” I told her, “and lie down upon it, your head to the trunk of the tree.” She hesitated.
“Do so!” I told her.
She lay, her back on the limb.
“Farther out,” I told her.
She edged, on her back, along the limb. Then she was more than five feet from the trunk.
She shuddered.
“Let your arms hang free,” I said.
She did. The slave bracelets, one locked on her right wrist, dangled. I then relocked her left wrist in the slave bracelets. Her wrists were now locked under the branch and behind her. I then crossed her ankles and bound them to the branch. Then, with another length of binding fiber, taken from my own pouch, I bound her by the belly, tightly, to the branch.
She looked back at me, over her shoulder, fear in her eyes.
I climbed downward. The sleen is a burrowing animal. It seldom climbs. The panther can climb, but it is accustomed to take its hunting scents from the ground.
I expected the girl would be safe. If she were not, I remembered, as a Gorean, that she had tried to kill me. If ought befell me, of course, it would not be well for her. She was gagged, braceleted, and bound. I was confident that she would wish me well in whatever enterprise I might be engaged. Though she was my enemy and prisoner, her desires would be most fervid for my success. The girl taken care of, I resumed my journey.
An Ahn before darkness I found the camp.
It was situated back from the bank of a small stream, one of the many tiny tributaries of the Laurius which interlace the forest.
I eased myself upward into the branches of a tree, whence I might command a better view.
It consisted of five huts, conical, of woven sapling and thatched, and was surrounded by a small palisade of sharpened saplings. A rough gate, fastened with vines, gave entrance into the camp. In the center of the camp there was a cooking hole, banked with a circle of flat stones. On a wooden spit, set on sticks, grease dropping into the fire and flaming, was a thigh of tabuk. It smelled good. The smoke, in a thin line, trickled upward into the sky. The thigh of tabuk was tended by a squatting panther girl, who, from time to time, picked bits of meat from it and thrust them in her mouth. She sucked her fingers clean. Over to one side another girl worked on a slave net, reworking and reknotting the weighted cords.
Elsewhere two girls, sitting cross-legged, were playing a cat’s-cradle game, matching one another’s intricate patterns with the twine. There were skillful. This game is popular in the north, particularly in the villages. It is also played frequently in Torvaldsland.
I saw, clearly, no other panther girls in or about the enclosure. I did see, however, a movement within one of the huts, and I supposed that to be another girl.
I saw no evidence of Talena. She might, of course, lie chained within one of the dark huts. Perhaps the movement I had seen within the hut had been she. I did not know.
One thing, however, seemed quite clear. Not all of Verna’s band was now within the enclosure.
There was probably five or six girls there at the most.
Her band, most reports agreed, consisted of some fifteen women.
I looked at the girls in the enclosure. They did not know I regarded them. They did not realize their camp had been found. They did not know that soon, perhaps tomorrow, their camp would be stormed, and they would be captives, destined for the iron and the slave markets of the south.
But we must move rapidly. I had learned from Grenna, my prisoner, that an unusually large band of panther girls, under a woman named Hura, was even now
