I motioned to Nar to relax his grip.
'I was trying to bring the tarn back to Ar,' said the girl. 'I was never on a tam before. I made mistakes. It. knew it. There was no tarn-goad.'
I gestured, and Nar removed his mandibles from the girl's throat.
'We were somewhere over the swamp forest,' said the girl, 'when we flew into a flock of wild tarns. My tam attacked the leader of the flock.'
She shuddered at the memory, and I pitied her for what must have been a horrifying experience, lashed helpless to the saddle of a giant tam reeling in a death struggle for the mastery of a flock, high over the trees of the swamp forest.
'My tam killed the other,' said the girl, 'and followed 3 it to the ground, where he tore it to pieces.' She shook with the memory. 'I slipped free and ran under the wing and hid in the trees. After a few minutes, his beak and talons wet with blood and feathers, your tam took flight. I last saw him at the head of the tarn flock.'
That was that, I thought. The tam had turned wild, all his instincts triumphant over the tarn whistle, the memory of men.
'And the Home Stone of Ar?' I asked.
'In the saddle pack,' she said, confirming my expectation. I had locked the pack when I had placed the Home Stone inside, and the pack is an integral part of the tarn saddle. When she had spoken, her voice had burned with shame, and I sensed the humiliation she felt at having failed to save the Home Stone. So now the tam was gone, returned to his natural wild state, the Home Stone was in the saddle pack, and I had failed, and the daughter of the Ubar had failed, and we stood facing one.j another on a green knoll in the swamp forest of Ar.
Chapter 7
A Ubar's Daughter
THE GIRL STRAIGHTENED, SOMEHOW PROUD but ludicrous in her mud bedaubed regalia. She stepped away from Nar, as if apprehensive that those fierce mandibles might threaten her again. Her eyes flashed from the narrow opening in her veil. 'It pleased the daughter of Marlenus,' she said, 'to inform you and your eight-legged brother of the fate of your tarn and of the Home Stone you sought.'
Nar's mandibles opened and shut once in annoyance. It was the nearest to anger I had ever seen the gentle creature come.
'You will release me immediately,' announced the daughter of the Ubar.
'You are free now,' I said.
She looked at me, stunned, and backed away, being careful to avoid Nar by a safe distance. She kept her eyes on my sword, as if she expected me to strike her down if she turned her back.
'It is well,' she finally said, 'that you obey my command. Perhaps your death will be made easier in consequence.'
'Who could refuse anything to the daughter of a Ubar?' I said, and then added maliciously, it seems now, 'Good luck in the swamps.'
She stopped and shuddered. Her robes still bore the wide lateral stain where the tongue of the tharlarion had wrapped itself. I glanced no more at her, but put my hand on the foreleg of Nar, gently, so that I might not injure any of the sensory hairs.
'Well, Brother,'. I said, remembering the insult of the daughter of the Ubar, 'shall we continue our journey?' I wanted Nar to understand that not all humankind were as contemptuous of the Spider People as the daughter of the Ubar.
'Indeed, Brother,' responded the mechanical voice of Nar. And surely I would rather have been `a brother tothat gentle, rational monster than many of the barbarians g I had met on Gor. Indeed, perhaps I should be honored that he had addressed me as brother — I who failed to meet his standards, I who had so many times, intentionally or unintentionally, injured those of the rational kind.
Nar, with me on his back, moved from the knoll.
'Wait!' cried the daughter of the Ubar. 'You can't leave me here!' She stumbled a bit from the knoll, tripped and fell in the water. She knelt in the green stagnant water, her hands held out to me, pleading, as if she suddenly realized the full horror of her plight, what it would mean to be abandoned in the swamp forest. 'Take me with you,' she begged.
'Wait,' I said to Nar, and the giant spider paused.
The Ubar's daughter tried to stand up, but, ridiculously enough, it,seemed as if one leg were suddenly far shorter than the other. She stumbled again and fell once more into the water. She swore like a tarnsman. I laughed and slid from Nar's back. I waded to her side P and lifted her to carry her back to the knoll. She was surprisingly light, considering her apparent size.
I had hardly taken her in my arms when she struck my face viciously with one muddy hand. 'How dare you touch the daughter of a Ubar!' she exclaimed. I shrugged and dropped her back in the water. Angrily she scram to bled to her feet as best she could and, hopping and stumbling, regained the knoll. I joined her there and examined her leg. One monstrous platform like shoe had broken from her small foot and flopped beside her ankle, still attached by its straps. The shoe was at least ten inches high. I laughed. This explained the incredible height of the Ubar's daughter.
'It's broken,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
She tried to rise, but one foot was, of course, some ten inches higher than the other. She fell again, and I unstrapped the remaining shoe. 'No wonder you.can hardly walk,' I said. 'Why do you wear these silly things?'
'The daughter of a Ubar must look down on her subjects,' was the simple if extraordinary reply.
When she stood up, now barefoot, her head came only a little higher than my chin. She might have been a bit taller than the average Gorean girl, but not much. She kept her eyes sullenly down, unwilling to raise them to look into my own. The daughter of a Ubar looked up to no man.
'I order you to protect me,' she said, never taking her eyes from the ground.
'I do not take orders from the daughter of the Ubar of Ar,' I said.
'You must take me with you,' she said, eyes still downcast.
'Why?' I asked. After all, according to the rude codes of Gor, I owed her nothing; indeed, considering her attempt on my life, which had been foiled only by the fortuitous net of Nar's web, I would have been within my rights to slay her, abandoning her body to the water lizards. Naturally, I was not looking at things from precisely the Gorean point of view, but she would have no way of knowing that. How could she know that I would not treat her as — according to the rough justice of Gor — she deserved?
'You must protect me,' she said. There was something of a pleading note in her voice.
'Why?' I asked, feeling angry.
'Because I need your help,' she said. Then she angrily snapped, 'You need not have made me say that!' She had lifted her head in fury, and she looked up into my eyes for an instant, and then suddenly lowered her head again, trembling with rage.
'Do you ask my favor?' I asked, which, on Gor, was much like asking if the person was willing to make a request — more simply, to say, 'Please.' To that small particle of respect it seemed I had a right.
Suddenly she seemed strangely docile.
'Yes,' she said. 'Stranger, I, the daughter of the Ubar of Ar, ask your favor. I ask you to protect me.'
'You tried to kill me,' I said. 'For all I know, you may still be an enemy.'
There was a long pause in which neither of us spoke.
'I know what you are waiting for,' said the daughter of the Ubar, strangely calm after her earlier fury — unnaturally calm, it seemed to me. I didn't understand her. What was it she thought I was waiting for? Then, to my astonishment, the daughter of the Ubar Marlenus, daughter of the Ubar of Ar, knelt before me, a simple warrior of Ko-ro-ba, and lowered her head, lifting and extending, her arms, the wrists crossed. It was the same simple ceremony that Sana had performed before me in the; chamber of my father, back at Ko-ro-ba — the submission of the captive female. Without raising her eyes from the ground, the daughter of the Ubar said in a clear, distinct voice: 'I submit myself.'
