I lay behind Mira in the darkness. Her back was to me. She lay on her right side, her head on her right arm. She twisted in her sleep. She was restless. I was patient.
She rolled over on her back, and extended her legs, her head turned from side to side. Then her head was still. She was now mine.
I knelt across her body, one leg on either side of her, pinning her, confining her movements.
Her eyes suddenly, startled, opened. She saw me. In terror, a reflex action, uncontrollable, her mouth, lips wild, opened. I thrust the heavy wadding deep in her mouth. She could utter not the smallest sound. As my right hand did this the loop of panther skin, twisted in its center, fell from my hand across her face. Swiftly, the twisted part deeply between her teeth, I knotted it with a warrior’s tightness behind the back of her neck. The wadding would not slip. I then turned her on her stomach and bound her wrists behind her back. Then I bent to her ankles, crossed them, and tied them together.
“Do not struggle,” I told her.
She felt the blade of the knife at her throat. Her eyes wild over her gag, she nodded her understanding.
“Do you understand what you are to do?” demanded Vinca.
“I can’t!” wept Mira. “I can’t!” Tears stained her cheeks from beneath the blindfold. I had fastened on her before bringing her to this predesignated clearing.
She could not see who it was who spoke to her. She knew only that she knelt, stripped, blindfolded and bound, before a harsh female interrogator, one whose uncompromising strictures and imperious tomes could only be interpreted as those of a leader of a large and important band of panther women.
Also, to her left and right, moving about, from time to time, were the other two paga slaves, those beside Vinca. Mira could have no way of knowing how many were present at her interrogation nor if those present were merely a delegation or smaller group drawn from a larger band. Indeed, she knew little more than that she was being severely addressed by one woman, and that there were others about. Ilene I had left with the other prisoners, chaining her, belly to a tree, by slave bracelets. Mira, kneeling blindfolded, interrogated, did not even know if I were still present.
Vinca, the red-haired girl, did her job well. From time to time, when not satisfied with an answer, or, sometimes, for no apparent reason at all, she would, unexpectedly, strike the blindfolded, bound, cowering Mira with the switch. Mira never knew when she would be struck. She wept. She would sometimes flinch from blows that had not even fallen.
“Please do not hit me again,” wept Mira.
“Very well,” said Vinca.
Mira lifter her head and, gasping, straightened her body.
Then suddenly the switch would fall again, with lashing ferocity.
Mira put down her head again, shuddering. I observed the fingers of her small, crossed, bound hands. I did not think it would take long now from Vinca to break her.
“Do you understand what you are to do?” demanded Vinca.
“I cannot!” wept Mira. “It is too dangerous! If I were found out, they would kill me! I cannot do it! I cannot do it!” I motioned to Vinca. No more blows fell.
“Very well,” said Vinca.
There was a long silence.
Mira lifted her head, unbelievingly. The ordeal was over. “Are you finished with me?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Vinca.
Mira’s head fell forward on her breast. Then she took a deep breath. She lifted her head.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“You will find out,” said Vinca. Then Vinca gestured to the two other paga slaves, my girls, in the skins of panthers. They unbound Mira’s ankles and pulled her, still blindfolded, to her feet. One on each arm they conducted her through the forest until they came to a place we had agreed upon, in which we had places four stakes. I followed silently.
Mira was put on her back and her two ankles were bound, widely apart, to two stakes.
Then her wrists were unbound from behind her and they, too, were bound widely apart, to two stakes.
“What are you doing with me?” begged Mira.
“We are staking you out for sleen,” said Vinca.
“No! No!” cried Mira.
The last knot was fastened, she was secured. “Please no!” cried Mira. I handed the sleen knife to Vinca. Mira, blindfolded, felt the blade on her thigh. “No!” she cried.
Vinca handed the blade back to me, which I cleaned and replaced in my sheath. Mira, staked out, blindfolded, felt a woman’s strong hand take the blood from her thigh and smear it across her belly and about her body.
“Please!” wept Mira. “I am a woman!”
“I, too, “ said Vinca, “ am a woman.”
“Spare me!” cried Mira. “Keep me as your slave!”
“I do not want you,” said Vinca.
“Sell me to a man!” she cried. “I will make him a docile slave, a dutiful, obedient and beautiful slave!” “Are you a natural slave?” asked Vinca.
“Yes,” cried Mira, “yes! Sell me! Sell me!”
“Do you beg to be a slave?” she asked.
“Yes,” wept Mira, “yes!”
“Untie her,” said Vinca.
Weeping, still blindfolded, Mira was untied and thrown before me on her knees. “Submit,” said Vinca, sternly.
Before me Mira performed the gesture of submission. I held her crossed wrists. “I submit myself, Master,” she said.
She was now my slave.
I nodded to Vinca.
Mira was thrown back on the grass.
“Let the slave,” said Vinca, “be now staked out for sleen.”
“No!’ cried Mira. “No!”
Swiftly Mira, blindfolded, found herself bound as before to the stakes, if anything more securely. Only now she lay there a bound slave.
“Leave her for the sleen,” said Vinca.
“Command me!’ cried Mira. “I will do anything for you! Anything! A slave begs to be commanded!” “It is too late,” said Vinca.
“I beg to serve you!” she wept. “I beg to serve you!”
“It is too late,” said Vinca.
“No!” cried Mira.
“Gag her,” said Vinca.
Again I thrust the heavy wadding of fur deep in Mira’s mouth, and tied it securely in place with the strip, twisted, of panther skin.
We then withdrew, leaving the slave Mira lashed helplessly between the stakes. We waited.
As we expected, it did not take long. Soon, prowling about in the brush, some yards away, was a sleen, drawn by the smell of fresh blood, her own, smeared on Mira’s slave body.
The sleen is a cautious animal. He circled her, several times.
I could smell the animal. So, too, doubtless could the others, and Mira. She seemed frozen in the lashings.
Movement will sometimes provoke the animal’s charge, if within a certain critical distance, which, for the sleen, is about four times the length of his body.
The sleen scratched about in the grass. It made small noises. Tiny hisses and growls. The prey did not move. It came closer. I could hear it sniffing. Then, puzzled, it was beside her. It thrust its snout against her body, and began to lick at the blood.
I removed a pile from one of the tem-wood arrows and capped the arrow with a wadding of fur.
Mira, blindfolded, helpless, threw back her head in terror. It would have been the scream of a bound slave, naked, staked out for sleen. But there was no sound for she had been gagged by a warrior. He had not even entitled her to utter a sound when the very jaws would be upon her. Her body pulled back, shuddering like that of a tethered tabuk set out by hunters for larls. First the sleen began to lick the blood from her body. Then it began to grow excited. Then it thrust forth its head and took her entire body, from her waist to the small of her back, in its jaws, and lifted it in the lashings.
I loosed the padded arrow. It struck the sleen on the side of the snout. Startled, it growled with rage, and leaped back, away from the prey. Then it stood over her, hissing, snarling, defending its find against another predator.
Then the two paga slaves other than Vinca came forward, dragging the carcass of a tabuk. I had felled it before seeking Mira in her camp. They threw the carcass to one side.
After much snarling and growling the sleen turned to the side, its snout still stinging, and seized up the tabuk and disappeared in the brush.
I found the arrow, removed the wadding and replaced the steel pile. Vinca and her girls had now unbound the lashings that fastened Mira. With difficulty they took from her mouth the heavy gag. They let the panther skin then hang about her neck and wound the wadding about it, that it might be soon replaced. They did not remove the blindfold. They put her on her knees and tied her hands behind her back.
“You know what you are to do, Slave?” asked Vinca.
Numbly, half in shock, Mira nodded her head.
She was to betray the panther girls of Hura’s band, in my camp, there were several bottles of wine, which had been taken originally from Verna’s camp by Marlenus, and then from his camp by the men of Tyros and the girls of Hura. It had been abandoned at their first campsite by the conquest circle. I had had my slaves, captured panther girls, bring it along, carrying it in our slave caravan. I had thought it might prove useful. I did not expect it would be drunk by all of the panther girls, but if I could deprive the men of Tyros of more of their dangerous, beautiful allies, it would be to my advantage.
