I looked away, sick.
'There is little to fear,' said the small fellow. 'It prefers tarsk.' 'It is not eating tarsk,' said one of the men.
'It is hungry,' said the small fellow. 'Do not be harsh with it. The tarsk is dried. The other is fresh. You should have brought more meat.'
The beats looked up at them, feeding.
'See the hand,' said one of the men.
The paw, or hand, had long, powerful, thick, multiply jointed digits. Such hands, those of this creature, or of one like it, had held the bars of the girl pen, and thrust them apart, admitting its bulk.
'There are six fingers,' whispered another man.
'What is it?' asked the leader of the men.
'A beast,' said the small, lame man, noncommittally. 'I do not really know what it is called. I met them outside of Corcyrus, last year.'
'Them?' asked the leader.
'Yes,' said the small fellow. 'There are two more, somewhere about.' The men looked about, frightened. Even the two cohorts of the small fellow, who had remained much in their places, seemed uneasy. This thing had arisen as though by magic from the grass. As large as these things were they were apparently not unskilled at concealment, and perhaps stalking.
'What do you mean, you 'met them outside Corcyrus?' said the leader. 'When Corcyrus fell to Argentum, in the Silver War,' said the small fellow, 'when proud Sheila, the ruthless Tatrix of Corcyrus, was deposed, they apparently fled the city.'
I had heard something of the Silver War when I was in Argentum. Sheila, the Tatrix, said to be as beautiful as she was proud and ruthless, had apparently escaped for a time but, later, had been caught in Ar, actually, and amusingly, and doubtless to her shame and humiliation, by a professional slave hunter. She had been put in a golden sack and taken back to Corcyrus to stand trial. Her final disposition was as follows: she became the property of the man who had taken her, the professional slave hunter.
'They broke from their confinements in the confusion, in the taking of the city?' said the leader.
' I do not think they were confined,' said the small fellow.
'They were kept as pets?' said the leader, awed.
'No,' said the small fellow.
'I did not understand,' said the leader.
'I was encamped not far from Corcyrus,' said the small fellow. 'I had come there hoping to make cheap purchase of valuable loot, from the soldiers. These things came to my camp. They had smelled food, I think. I threw them my food, in terror. That was where I first met them. Before that I had not even known there were such things.'
'They have been with you since?' asked the leader.
'Yes,' said the small fellow.
'Look!' said one of the men, pointing to the beast.
At his exclamation the beast, curious, looked up at him.
He stepped back.
The paw of the beast was wrapped about the strings of one of the fallen men' s wallets. It then jerked it from the belt, breaking the thongs. Then, watching the men, it similarly relieved the second body of its wallet.
'You have trained it to steal,' said the leader, startled, awed.
The beast then opened the wallets and poured the contents into its paw. There it moved the coins about, in the palm of one broad paw, by means of a digit on the other paw. It was dexterous, for so large a beast. Those were clearly sophisticated prehensile appendages.
I watched this with horror.
The beast then poured the coins back in one of the wallets, and threw it to the blanket, before the small fellow.
'They find me of value,' said the small fellow. 'As you can imagine it would be difficult for them to enter a town, go to the market and purchase goods.' 'I do not understand,' said the leader, white-faced. 'These things are animals, beasts!'
'Yes,' said the small fellow.
'It is hard to believe that such things were pets in Corcyrus.'
'They were not pets,' said the small fellow.
'I do not understand,' said the man.
'They were allies,' said the small fellow.
'Who is captain here?' asked the leader, frightened.
At his point the beast rose from behind the bodies. It was some eight feet, or so, in height. It must have weighed eight or nine hundred pounds. Fangs protruded from the sides of its jaw. It had a double ring of teeth. Its mouth, jaws, now, were red with blood. It wiped them with the back of one of its long arms. It looked at the leader of the men. 'I am captain,' it said. 'Spare us,' begged the leader. 'Take our coins! Leave us our lives!' He then removed his walled and tossed it, hastily, timidly, onto the blanket, beside the other wallet, that which contained the coins from the two fallen men. His remaining two men did so, as well.
'No, no,' said the small fellow. 'You do not understand. We mean you no harm. It was you who did not intend to deal fairly. We now have the meat which we needed, though I would surely have preferred another form of it. He took only what we all knew had been agreed upon. He was merely exacting his due. Similarly, we want only the five silver tarsks for each of these women.'
'We do not want them,' said the leader.
'Do not be silly,' said the small fellow. He then, crouching, down by the blanket, took the leader' s wallet and removed several coins from it. He put these in small piles on the blanket. There were five such piles. Each contained five silver tarsks. He then handed the leader back the wallet. The other two men, too, retrieved their wallets. 'The other money, of course, from those two fellows,' said the small fellow, 'is forfeit.'
'Of course,' said the leader.
I think they all wished to turn and run.
'Do not be afraid,' said the small fellow. 'He will not hurt you. He is friendly.'
The beast, then lifted its head, its ears erected. Too, very carefully, alertly, it sniffed the air. Such a thing then, I suspected, had unusually keen senses. I was aware of the excellence of its night vision. I had more than enough evidence of its ferocity and strength. Too, I had seen it count money. I had heard it speak. It could bend bars. It could destroy men. Such a beast, I feared, was some type of dominant life form. How small and weak humans seemed compared to such a thing. How I feared then for my species! I now wanted to be sold as quickly as possible to the brigands, and taken from this place, to be locked in the closed slave wagon. Would I be safe even there, or could such a thing tear off the plates, those bolted, iron plates which confined us so well within, in the darkness, to get at us› I had not been given permission to speak, and dared not ask it. If I had I would have begged release from the railing and submission to any bonds my captors might choose, even body cages or wire jackets, simply to be taken from this place!
'What is it?' asked the small fellow of the beast.
'Sleen,' is said.
'Do you detect men with it?' asked the small fellow, anxiously.
'No,' it said.
'It is then a wild sleen,' he said.
'It is past noon,' said the leader of the other men. 'It is late in the day for a sleen to be abroad.' The sleen is predominantly nocturnal.
'It is probably on the trace of tabuk, from last night,' said the small man. I pulled at the binding fiber which confined my wrists. It was still damp, from having been in my mouth, when I had been brought up from the well. I squirmed on my knees, my neck bound at the railing. If there were a sleen about we were helpless. We could not even run. It was almost as though we were fastened on a meat rack.
'We did not even come into the area until it was light,' said the one of the leader' s men.
From the remark I gathered that it was not likely that the animal, if there were one about, would be
