I walked slowly to the stained, furred dais. I had placed on it a glass of paga before I had left the room. I saw, against a steel wall, the shattered remnants of such a glass. But on the dais there was another glass, it, too, filled with paga.
I laughed loudly.
I bent and picked up the second glass. I lifted it to the empty room, in both a toast and a salute.
Then I downed the paga. Then I threw the glass against the steel wall, where it shattered, and fell, its fragments showering downward, mingling with those of the other glass.
I turned about and left the room. Outside Imnak was trying to organize a search of the complex.
'There is no time,' I said.
'But the beast,' he said.
'There is no time,' I said. 'We must make away.'
'Yes,' said he, 'Tarl, who hunts with me.' He hurried away, calling to the red hunters.
The snow sleen were already harnessed.
I paused there, alone, at the portal of the chamber of Zarendargar, Half-Ear, war general of the Kurii. I looked within, once, at the blood-stained dais, and the steel wall, at the foot of which, mingled, lay the fragmenti of two glasses.
Then quickly I turned about and strode from the area. The trek must be initiated.
37
We Have Left The Complex; We Will Make Our Way Toward The Permanent Camp
'Look!' cried Imnak.
I turned the sled about Others, too, turned about, the long sleds, like clouds, on the bleak ice.
Many of those with us cried out in wonder and alarm.
Behind us, in the winter sky, looming, streaming hundreds of pasangs upward into the sky, shimmering and flickering, extended vast, subtle curtains of chromatic lights, yellows, and pinks and reds.
'It is not the season,' said a hunter.
Then men cried out with awe. Some women screamed. Children hid their faces.
For an instant, in that lofty, panoramic display, there had appeared, only for an instant, etched in light, the gigantic head of a Kur. One ear, the left, had been half torn from its head. The lips drew back, exhibiting the Kur's fearful sign of pleasure. Then the fearsome head was gone.
We then saw, I, and the others, and the People, on the pack ice more than an Ahn's trek from the complex, a blast of light which, in the darkness of the polar night, made us cry out with pain, half blinded.
For a terrible instant it had seemed as bright as day, with a brightness that most of the People, in their northern regions, had never known, a brightness that might have struck the white sands of the blazing Tahari or the green jungles of the rain forests of the eastern Cartius.
Then the lights in the sky were gone and the polar night had returned, save for a long, shimmering volume of yellowish smoke that reared from the distant ice.
'Lie down!' I cried to those standing about me. 'Behind the sleds!'
The shock wave of the blast, in some seconds, struck us. It drove ice and pelting, granular snow before it. It tore at our furs. I held the sled, bracing it against the blast. Arlene cried out with terror as the sled twisted and half-tipped. She, like others of her kind, women, slaves, and slaves to be, was absolutely helpless. She was confined in two fur sacks, one placed within the other, the layer of warm air between them acting as insulation. She could not escape from the two sacks, and they were tied on the sled. Within the sacks she was naked, and in sirik. There was no danger that women such as she would escape on the ice. The sleen harnessed to the sled squealed with fury, scratching, thrown from its feet, twisted and tangled in the traces. We were in the blast of air for only some seven seconds. And then it passed as quickly as it had come.
I cuffed the sleen on its snout and, holding it by the hamess, jerked it up, disentangling it from the traces. A single sleen is kept in two traces, or a double trace. When more than one sleen, or girl, pulls the sled, they are commonly kept on a single trace. This conserves leather and diminishes the amount of tangling that might otherwise occur.
I turned the sled back to face where the complex had been. I stood on the rear runners, lifting myself for a better look. Arlene struggled, as she could, to see. My other girls. Audrey, Barbara, Constance, Belinda, and the girl who had once been the Lady Rosa, were tied on the sleds of other hunters. Arlene had been quite proud that she had been the one I had chosen to bind on my own sled. Too, she was the first one, of all the loot girls, on whom I had locked my chains. After the first camp we would remove the girls from sirik and use them; when we set out again they would be furred, and in neck coffle. Sometimes I thought I might let Audrey lead the coffle, and sometimes Arlene. I would enjoy playing the two Earth girls off against one another, each one striving more desperately, more helplessly, to please me than the others.
I smiled.
Women with deep feminine needs are mercilessly exploited by Gorean men.
It was a pleasant game. They are so helpless.
And yet how lovely they are. One must strive to remain strong with them.
I touched the side of Arlene's head with my mitten. Her head was within two hoods, parts of the fur sacks, tied on the sled, within which she lay chained.
She turned her head to look up at me, and smiled.
'Do you want to be respected?' I asked.
'You will never respect me,' she laughed. 'I am a slave.'
'Do you want to be respected?' I asked.
'No man respects a woman who knows what else to do with her,' she said.
'It is a Gorean saying,' I said.
'I know,' she said.
'You are an insolent wench,' I said. 'Perhaps I should whip you.'
'I know that you will whip me, if you wish to do so,' she said. 'And that thrills me. Also, it makes me determined to try to please you, completely, and totally, so that you will not wish to do so.'
'Good,' I said. I looked at her. 'Would you like to be returned to Earth?' I asked.
'Master jests, I trust,' she said.
'Of course,' I said, 'for you are a luscious slave, fit for chains and markets.'
'No,' she said, 'I would not like to he returned to Earth. I have never been so sensuously alive as here, at the mercy of men. I pity even the free women of this world, who cannot know the joys and loves of the female slave. I do not wish to return to Earth, to adopt again the role of pretending to be a man. What has Earth to offer that is worth more than joy and happiness?'
'I may sell you,' I said.
'You may do so if you wish, Master,' she said, 'for I am only a slave, If you do sell me, I shall hope that I will please another.'
'You speak scarcely like an Earth girl,' I said.
'I am no longer an Earth girl,' she said, 'I am a Gorean slave girl.'
'True,' I said.
She snuggled down in the furs. I saw the furred sacks, in which she was confined, move under the ropes which bound them on the sled. I heard the small sound of the chain from within the furred sacks.
'You have not answered my question,' I said.
'What question?' she asked.
'Do you want to be respected?' I asked.
'No,' she said. She smiled up at me. 'I want to be loved, and treasured. I want to be mastered.'
I laughed.
'I want to be a woman,' she said.
