'The ship was fired, and then sunk,' said he, 'the supply ship, that bound for the north.'
'I know,' I said.
'I am a failed captain,' said he.
'It is difficult to defend against tarn attack, the sheets of burning oil to the sails.'
'They came again and again,' he said.
'You were not a ram ship,' I said, 'not craft set for war.'
'Who would have thought there would be tarnsmen north of Torvaldsland,' said Ram.
'It is possible in the spring and summer,' said Sarpedon.
'You saved your men,' I said. 'You did well.'
'What ship is this?' asked Imnak.
'I had a ship sent north,' said I, 'with food for the men of the polar basin, when I heard the herd of Tancred had not yet trod the snows of Ax Glacier.'
Imnak smiled. 'How many skins would you have demanded in payment for this provender?' asked he.
'I had not thought to make a profit,' I said. Imnak's face darkened.
The people of the north are proud. I had not meant to demean him or his people.
'It is a gift,' I said. He would understand the exchange of gifts.
'Ah,' he said. Gifts may be exchanged among friends. Gifts are important in the culture of the men of the polar basin. There need be little occasion for their exchange Sometimes, of course, when a hunter does not have food for his family another hunter will invite him to his house, or will pay a visit, bearing meat, that they may share a feast. This pleasantry, of course, is returned when the opportunity presents itself. Even trading in the north sometimes takes on the aspect, interestingly, of the exchange of gifts, as though commerce, obvious and raw, might somehow seem to offend the sensibility of the proud hunters. He who dares to pursue the twisting, sinuous dangerous sea sleen in the arctic waters, fended from the teeth and sea by only a narrow vessel of tabuk skin and his simple weapons and skill, does not care to be confused with a tradesman.
'I know you are wise and I am stupid,' said Imnak, 'for I am only a lowly fellow of the polar basin, but my peoples, in the gathering of the summer, in the great hunts, when the herd comes, number in the hundreds.'
'Oh,' I said. I had not realized there were so many. One ship would have done little to alleviate the distress, the danger of starvation, even had it managed to slip through the air blockade of the Kurii's tarnsmen.
'Too,' said Imnak, 'my people are inland, waiting for the herd to come to the tundra grazing. It gives me pleasure to know that you understood this, and knew where to find them, and had considered well how to transport the gifts to them. so many sleeps across the tundra.'
'There was only one ship,' I said. 'And I had not realized the difficulty of getting the supplies to where they would be most needed.'
'Do my ears deceive me?' asked Imnak. 'I cannot believe what I am hearing. Did I hear a white man say be had made a mistake?'
'I made a mistake,' I said. 'One who is wise in the south may be a fool in the north.'
This admission took Imnak aback for a moment.
'You are wiser than I,' I added, for good measure.
'No,' he said, 'you are wiser than I.'
'Perhaps I am wiser in the south,' I said, 'but you are wiser in the north.'
'Perhaps,' he said.
'And you are a great hunter,' I said.
He grinned. 'I have done a little hunting,' he said.
'Rouse up! Rouse up!' called a guard, beating on the wooden bars of the pen with his spear. 'It is time for your gruel, and thence to your labors.'
Two guards were then amongst us, prodding men awake and up.
'Release this man from the chain,' said Ram, indicating me. 'Yesterday he was beaten with the snake.'
It was not unusual that men died under the lash of the snake, that heavy coil laced with wire and flecks of iron.
'It is ordered,' said the guardsman, 'that he labors today.'
Ram looked at me, startled. I was already on my feet. My lovely captor, I recalled, had said that I would labor today. I was to well understand whose prisoner I was. 'I am hungry,' I said.
The guard backed away from me. He went to check the ankle chains of the others.
We were soon shuffled from the pen. In making our way to the cook shack we passed the large, wooden dais on which the whipping frame had been erected. It was some twelve feet square, and some four feet in height, its surface reached by steps. The whipping frame itself, vertical, consisted of two heavy uprights, some six inches square and eight feet high, and a crossbeam, some six inches square and some seven feet in length. Each upright was supported by two braces, each also six inches square. A heavy ring was bolted on the underside of the high crossbeam; it was from this ring that a prisoner, bound by the wrists, might be suspended. A matching ring was bolted in the beams of the dais, under the upper ring. It was to the lower ring that the prisoner's feet, some six inches above the wood, crossed and tied, might be bound. This prevents undue swinging under the lash.
We were knelt outside the cook shack. We were given wooden bowls. We were served gruel, mixed with thick chunks of boiled tabuk, by the blond, she who had once been Barbara Benson, now Thimble, and the dark- haired girl, who had once been the rich girl, Audrey Brewster, now the slave girl, Thistle. Thimble had been made first girl. She made Thistle carry the metal bucket of gruel while she, with a ladle, filled the bowls. Neither girl any longer wore the strings on her throat, identifying them as a hunter's beasts, nor her brief furs nor the fur wrappings on their feet. Both had been placed in belted woolen camisks, an open-sided garment sometimes worn by female slaves. Though it was chilly both were barefoot.
Blond Thimble cried out, seized by one of the men in the chain. She struck at him with the ladle. She was thrown to the ground beneath him. Instantly guards were on the fellow, striking him with spear butts and pulling him from the girl. They struck him cruelly. 'She is for the guards,' they told him.
Terrified, Thimble, her camisk half torn away, stumbled back, away from the chain.
'Fill their bowls again,' said the head guard. 'They have much work to do today.'
Thimble and Thistle began again at the far end of the line to my right. They swayed back, frightened, as far as they could from the line, in their serving.
They knew the terror of slave girls, among men hungry for women.
There were some forty men in my chain. Along the some seventy pasangs of the wall there were several such chains, with their own pens and facilities. Somewhere between three and four hundred men, with their guards, labored at one place or another along the wall. I do not think it was a mistake that I was in one of the more central chins. My lovely captor, doubtless, had so decreed it. She was quite proud of my capture, which she regarded as a function of her own merits. She wanted me in a position of maximum security, nearer the wall's center, closer to her headquarters. Too, I think she relished the pleasure of seeing me in her chains.
We were marched past the high platform overlooking the wall.
She was on the platform, with two guards.
'She is up early this morning,' said one of the men.
Near the platform there were piled some logs and heavy stones, carried there by other laborers the preceding afternoon. Tools, also, wrapped in hide, were there.
'Lift these logs,' said a guard. 'Carry these stones.'
I, with Ram and Imnak, and Tasdron, who had been the captain in the fee of Samos, he whose ship had been lost to the tarnsmen, shouldered one of the logs.
My lovely captor looked down on us. Her face was flushed with pleasure.
'She wears a man's furs,' said Ininak.
That was true, at least from the point of view of a red hunter. Women of the red hunters are furred differently from the hunters. Their boots, soft, of sleenskin, are high, and reach the crotch, instead of the knee. Instead of trousers of fur they wear brief panties of fur. When they cover their breasts it is commonly with a shirt of beaded lartskin. In cold weather they, like the men, wear one or more hooded parkas of tabuk hide. Tabuk hide is the warmest pelt in the arctic. Each of the hairs of the nothern tabuk, interestingly, is hollow. This trapped air, contained in each of the hollow hairs, gives the fur excellent insulating properties. Air, incidentally, is extremely important, generally, in the effectiveness of the clothing of the red hunters. First, the garments, being of hide, are
