'Now,' I said, 'get up and put out our food.'
'Yes, Master,' she said, struggling to her feet.
'And tonight,' I said, 'after we have eater, and when we are sitting about, you will serve each of us in turn, and for as many rounds as we wish.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'And furthermore,' I said, 'you will do so with absolute obedience and in complete silence.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'It will be a pleasant evening,' said Cuwignaka.
'Yes,' said Hci, 'but there is another whom I would rather have in my thongs.'
'I think I knw who she is,' laughed Cuwignaka.
'And is there not one,' asked Hci, 'whom you, my friend, Cuwignaka, would rather have licking your feet in terror?'
'Perhpas,' smiled Cuwignaka.
'The pit is slow work, Tatankasa, Mitakola,' said Hci. 'Even with good fortune we cannot snare enough tarns by winter to combat the Kinyanpi.'
'Using the pit, I hope to catch only two or three,' I said.
'That will not be enough,' said Hci.
'Not in themselves,' I admitted.
'Ah!' said Hci. 'But that will be very difficult and dangerous.'
'I do not see another way,' I said. 'Do you?'
'No,' said Hci.
'Are you with us?' I asked.
'Of course,' he said.
We then went and sat down where Mira, on leaves, had set forth our food.
We chewed the cold pemmican. We would not make a fire in this place.
From time to time, chewing, we cast a glance at Mira. She knelt to one side, her head down.
She was very beautiful. It was difficult not to anticipate the pleasures we would later recieve from her.
I threw her a piece of pemmican.
The three moons, visible through the brances, had risen.
I looked again at Mira.
She lifted her head, chewing, and our eyes met. Then she looked down, again, shyly, smiling.
She was a common slave, who, tonight, would serve us as a slave in common.
Chapter 39
THE FEATHER
'It is exhausted, but it is still dangerous!' I cried. I held one end of the rope about the flopping bird's neck, keeping it taut, and Hci, on the other side, held the other. 'Be careful,' I called to Cuwignaka.
Speaking soothingly, he approached the bird.
We were in the vicinity of the tarn pit. This was the second tarn we had caught. The first one we had caught yesterday.
Cuwignaka suddenly leaped forward and locked his arms about the bird's beak. He was almost thrown loose as the bird shook his head. Holding the beak with one arm, then, he whipped rope about it and, in moments, had tied it closed. In a few moments we had secured its wings and then, working together, Hci and I, bound its legs together.
I took the boggling rope from its right ankle, that which had fastened it to the hobbling log. It shuddered, lying on its side. 'It is ready for the travois,' I said.
I then turned about and went back to the tarn pit. Its roof was gone, torn away and scattered when the concealed hobbling log had been jerked upward though it.
I looked down into the pit. The girl lay on her stomach, her hands over her head, shuddering and sobbing below me.
'Are you all right?' I asked. I had not bothered, this time, to bind her.
'Did I not please you last night?' she sobbed.
'Yes,' I said, puzzled.
'but you put me out on the tether,' she said.
'Of course,' I said.
Her body trembled, uncontrollably.
'It is over now,' I told her. 'We have it.'
She sobbed, hysterically. I did not think she could control the movements of her body. 'You did not do badly,' I assured her.
She whimpered, shuddering.
'Why are you so upset?' I asked.
She sobbed, hysterically, shuddering. To be sure, it had been a close thing.
I slipped into the pit beside her and took her in my arms. 'It is over now,' I reassured her. 'It is all right now.'
She looked at me, her eyes wide, frightened. 'What you can make us do,' she gasped. I stroked her head, gently. I had once seen a similar hysteria in an urt hunter's girl, in Port Kar. She had barely missed being taken by a giant urt in the canals. But the spear thrust of the hunter had been unerring and turned the urt at the last instant and the second thrust had finished it off. Girls in Port Kar will do almost anything to keep the rope off their neck and keep out of the canals. To be sure it is normally only low girls or girls who may have displeased a master in some respect who are used for such work.
'Last night,' she said, 'did I not please you well?'
'Yes,' I said, 'you did, and tonight you will please us again, and in the same way.'
She moaned.
'You did not do badly today,' I reassured her, 'truly. For example, tonight it will not be necesary to beat you again, with coiled ropes. That should please you.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Indeed,' I said, 'you did not do badly, at all. Perhaps I will ahve one, or both, of your ears notched, as our friends, the red savages do, with prize kaiila, trained for the hunt or war, that you may be recongnized as a valuable, trained tarn-bait girl.'
She pressed herself against me, sobbing.
'It is a joke,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I saw that she was not in a mood to appreciate such humor. I myself, however, for what it is worth, had not thought that it was bad at all.
'Do you, and the others, not care for me?' she asked.
'You are only a slave,' I reminded her.
'Of course, Master!' she said. 'How foolish of me, to think that one might care, in the least, for one who is only a slave!'
'You are only a property,' I told her, 'and worthless, except that you might have some small monetary value.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I did not see any reason to tell her that slaves are the most tresured, despised and loved of all women. Being Gorean she knew this.
'But cannot a master,' she asked, 'sometimes feel some small affetion for a property, even, say, for a pet sleen?'
'Perhaps,' I said, 'but that would not mean, then, that the sleen was other than a sleen.'
