'Kisu!' she cried. 'I cannot wade in these robes!'
'Do you wish me to remove them from you?' asked Kisu.
'Were you not once fond of me, Kisu?' she called.
'You are the daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu,' said Kisu, coldly.
'Why will you not take me into the canoe?' she asked.
'You are where the tharlarion can take you, within my sight,' he said.
'No!' she screamed. 'No! No!'
'Ah, but, yes, my dear Tende,' he said.
'Please, Kisu!' she begged. 'Please!'
'I hear but the voice of the proud free woman, Tende, daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu,' said Kisu.
She began to weep. She tried to approach the canoe more closely but Kisu, as she would approach, would, with a powerful stroke, move the canoe more swiftly forward, keeping her at the length of the tether. Once he let her approach the stern but, as she reached out with her bound hands, he, with the paddle, thrust her back. She stood there in the water. He then again moved the canoe forward. Again she followed at the length of her tether.
'Please, Kisu,' she begged.
But, again, he did not respond to her.
We paddled on, not speaking, for a quarter of an Ahn.
'Look,' said Ayari, after a time, looking back.
'Are they there now?' asked Kisu.
'Yes,' said Ayari, 'four of them, tharlarion.'
Tende looked back over her shoulder.
At first I could not discern them. Then, because of the subtle movement of the water, I saw them. Their bodies, except for their eyes and nostrils, and some ridges on their backs, as they swam, were submerged.
They were about eighty yards away. They did not hurry, but moved with the fluid menace of their kind.
We stopped the canoe.
Tende, lower in the water than we, then saw them.
'Kisu!' she screamed. 'Take me into the canoe!'
'You are where I want you,' he said, 'where the tharlarion may take you, within my sight.'
'No!' she screamed. 'No! No, please! No, please!'
'I hear the voice of the proud free woman, Tende,' said Kisu, 'who is the daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu.'
'No,' she wept, 'no!'
'Then what voice is it that I hear?' inquired Kisu.
'The voice of a helpless female slave,' cried Tende, 'who begs her master to spare her life!'
'You are pretending to be a slave,' said Kisu.
'No,' she cried, 'no! I am a true slave!'
The four tharlarion were now some twenty yards away. They, sensing the static position of their prey, slowed their approach.
'In your heart?' asked Kisu.
'Yes, yes, Master!' she cried.
'A natural and rightful slave?' he asked.
'Yes, I am a natural and rightful slave!' she cried.
The tharlarion stopped swimming now; they drifted toward her. This has the effect of minimizing the pressure waves projected before their bodies, an effect that might otherwise alert a wary, but unsuspecting prey. With tiny backward movements of their short legs they then became motionless, watching her.
'What is your name?' asked Kisu.
'Whatever Master pleases,' she wept. The answer was suitable.
'Do you beg slavery?' he asked.
'Yes, yes, Master!' she cried.
'Perhaps I shall consider it, Girl,' said he.
'Please, Master!' she cried.
With a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, the tiniest motion of their short legs, the four tharlarion, almost ringing the girl, seemed to drift again toward her, like half-submerged, meaningless logs, save for the methodicality of their convergence. There would then be a sudden lunge, and the snapping of the great jaws, the fighting for the prey.
'Master!' cried Tende.
Kisu, suddenly, reached out and, seizing the girl by the bound wrists, she screaming, wrenched her bodily in a shower of water across the thwart of the canoe.
At the same time, sensing the sudden movement of the prey, the four tharlarion, lashing the water with their tails, cut toward her. Two of them struck toward the stern of the canoe. Another uttered an explosive cry, half grunt, half bellow, which, in rage and frustration, sounded across the marsh. The fourth, jaws distended, more than a yard in width, attacked the side of the canoe. I beat it back with the paddle.
The canoe began to tip backward as another tharlarion clambered, half out of the water, onto its stern. Kisu thrust at it with his paddle. It bit the paddle in two. The girls, clinging to the thwarts, screamed. Ayari moved toward the bow of the canoe, half standing, to try to balance the weight. With the splintered handle of the paddle Kisu jabbed at the tharlarion. It slipped back off the stern. The canoe struck with a clash in the water, nearly capsizing. Another tharlarion struck at the side of the canoe with its snout. I heard wood crack, but not break. It turned, to use its tail. Another tharlarion slipped beneath the canoe.
'Move the canoe!' cried Kisu. 'Do not let them under it!'
I thrust at the water with the paddle, and then, as the tharlarion began to surface under the slender vessel, pushed down at it. The canoe slipped off its back, and righted itself. Ayari, seizing one of the paddles, and I, then moved the canoe forward.
The tharlarion were quick to follow, snapping and bellowing. Kisu, with the splintered paddle handle, thrust back one of them.
Then I saw a handful of dried fish fly into the maw of one of the beasts. Ayari, his paddle discarded, was reaching into the cylindrical basket of dried fish, torn open, which had been among the supplies of the canoe. He hurled more fish to another tharlarion, which, with a snapping, popping noise, clamped shut its jaws on the salty provender. He similarly threw fish to the other two beasts.
'Hand me another paddle,' I said to the first girl in the canoe. She was crouching, trembling, head down, in the bottom of the canoe.
'Perform, Slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she whispered. She handed the paddle back to the blond-haired barbarian who, half in shock, numb, handed it back to me. She looked at me, frightened, and then looked away. I think she knew that she again belonged to me. I pulled the paddle from her fingers and passed it back to Kisu, who took it calmly. Kisu and I then began to propel the canoe eastward. Tende, wrists bound beneath her body, lay shuddering between Kisu and myself, in the bottom of the canoe. Ayari then threw bits of fish into the water, where the tharlarion must swim to them, to obtain them. He threw successive tidbits further and further away, behind the canoe. Then he scattered several scraps of fish at one time, in an arc behind the tharlarion. Kisu and I continued to propel the canoe from the vicinity. The tharlarion, distracted and feeding, did not follow.
After a quarter of an Ann Kisu laid aside his paddle. He put Tende to her back, crouching beside her. He untied her hands.
She looked up at him.
'It is right, is it not,' he asked, 'to enslave a rightful and natural slave?'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
He then, gently, removed her clothing.
'You are beautiful,' he said.
'A girl is pleased, if Master is pleased,' she said.
'It is too bad you are only a slave,' he said.
