'You will soon find out,' I told him.
He laughed.
'Remain kneeling here before us, Girl,' I told Arlene.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
Ram and I took meat from her plate, and she remained where she was, kneeling back on her heels.
'I am sure the beast was hunting you,' I said.
'Perhaps,' said Ram.
'How do you like our poor feast?' asked Kadluk, coming by.
It is the greatest feast I have ever eaten,' said Ram. 'It is glorious.'
'Maybe it is not bad,' said Kadluk, puffing his head down, grinning, and sliding over to his place.
'But did it follow you for a long time?' I asked.
'I do not know,' said Ram.
'I speculate, though I do not know,' I said, 'that it intercepted you, that it had been waiting for you.'
'How would it know where to wait? he asked.
'I fear,' I said, 'my presence in this village is known. When I did not return south, it would be speculated I would go north. Only one red hunter was at the wall, Inmak. Surely it would be thought that I might then go to his village. Too, I may have been spied on here. I do not know.'
Ram regarded me. 'I understand little of this,' he said.
'I think it was known,' I said, 'that I would be, or was, in the village of Kadluk. In Lydius, we had been seen together, too. Thus, when you came north it might be thought that you were seeking me.'
'I made no secret of this,' said Ram.
'Thus, if the enemy, if we may speak of them so, knew my location and your intent, to contact me, it would be simple to lay an ambush for you outside of the village.'
'Yes,' he said.
'What did not occur to them, I suspect,' I said, 'is that the sound of your sleen would carry as far as it did, and that the hunters would come forth to greet you.'
'There is another possibility, a fearful one,' said Ram.
'What is that?' I asked.
'In following me,' he said, 'I may have led foes to your location.'
'That is possible,' I said. 'But if it is true, it is acceptable.'
'How is that?' asked Ram.
'I think it is the desire of at least one other that I participate in an interview. I have come north, in a sense, responding to an invitation. If it is known where I am, the enemy may attempt to contact me here.'
'Or kill you,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'Why would the Kur attempt to kill me?' asked Ram.
'Perhaps you are carrying information it did not wish me to receive,' I said.
'In Lydius,' he said, 'Sarpedon, the tavern keeper, and several others, like myself, newly arrived from the wall, suddenly and without warning, tell upon Sarpelius and his henchmen.' Sarpelius, I recalled, had been the heavy, paunchy fellow who had taken over the tavern from Sarpedon. He had worked with several others, who had functioned to impress workers for the wall.
'Sarpedon now has his tavern back?' I inquired.
'Of course,' said Rant 'Sarpelius and his men, before we sold them from the wharves as naked slaves, were persuaded to speak.'
'Doubtless that was wise of them,' I speculated.
'Their information was not so precious to them that they preferred to retain it in the face of death by torture,' said Ram. 'Sarpelius, for example, did not wish to be thrust feet first, bit by bit, into a cage of hungry sleen.'
'It would not be pleasant,' I admitted.
'But it seems, unfortunately, as minions, they knew little.'
'What did you gather?' I asked.
'The one called Drusus, whom we knew at the wall,' he said, 'paid their fees and issued their instructions. Tarnsmen transported the workers, drugged, to the wall.'
'What of the girls?' I asked. I remembered Tina and Constance. 'They were not at the wall.'
'We learned from Sarpelins, from what he had learned from Drusus, that there was a headquarters farther north, one which could be reached only in the late spring, summer or early fall.'
'Perhaps it is at sea,' I said. The sea, being frozen, would be impassable to shipping in the winter.
'Perhaps,' he said.
'But, too,' I said, 'tarns, like most birds, will fly in the arctic only during those seasons.'
'That is true,' he said.
'I think the headquarters, however,' I said, 'must be at sea.'
'Why is that?' asked Ram.
'If it were on the land,' I said, 'I think the red hunters, of one village or another, in their hunting, would have come across it. It would be, I assume, a large installation.'
'I do not know,' said Ram.
'Did you learn more?' I asked.
'We learned that it was to this mysterious headquarters that Drusus reported. Too, it is to that headquarters that, from time to time, choice slave beauties were taken.'
'Such as Tina and Constance,' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'You see, I thought you might have known this and thus had come north to find Constance.'
'You have come north then primarily,' I said, 'seeking Tina.'
'Yes,' he said.
'But she is only a slave,' I smiled.
He reddened. 'But she is my slave,' he said, angrily. 'She was taken from me, and I do not like that.' He struck himself on the chest. 'No one takes a slave from Ram of Teletus!' he said. 'I will fetch her back, and then, if I wish, I will give her away, or beat and sell her.'
'Of course.' I said.
'Do not misunderstand me,' he said, irritably. 'It is not the girl who is important, for she is only a slave. It is the principle of the thing.'
'Of course,' I granted him. 'Yet there seems much time and risk involved in recovering someone who is probably only a silver-tarsk girl.'
'It is the principle of the thing,' he said.
'Of course,' I said.
'You seem very agreeable,' he said.
'I am.' I said.
'I think Tina is my perfect slave,' he said, grinning. 'I must have her at my feet. kneeling, in the shadow of my whip.' He then looked, seriously, at me. 'I hoped to join you in the north,' said he. 'Together we might seek out Tina and Constance.'
'Who is Constance, Master?' asked Arlene.
'One who, like yourself, was once free,' I said. 'She is now a lovely slave. She might teach you much about being a woman.'
'Yes. Master,' said Arlene, putting her head down.
I was bringing her along slowly in her slavery.
'You, Slave,' I said to Arlene, sharply. She lifted her head, quickly.
'Yes. Master.' she said, frightened.
'Meat,' I said.
She lifted the plate of boiled meat to us. Ram and I helped ourselves.
'What do you know about a headquarters in the north, Girl?' I asked her.
