“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
I took the gag, from where I had pulled it down about her throat, and refixed
it, securely.
I then reknotted the binding fiber from where it was fastened, behind the small
of her back, and also unknotted it, in front, from the chain of the slave
bracelets. I put the binding fiber in my belt. I then unlocked the left slave
bracelet.
“Climb,” I told her, indicating a nearby tree.
She stood, unsteadily. She shook her head. She was weak. She had lost blood.
“Climb,” I told her, “or I shall bracelet you on the ground.”
Slowly she climbed, branch by branch, I following her.
“Keep climbing,” I told her.
At last she was more than thirty feet from the ground. She was frightened.
“Edge out on the limb,” I told her, “and lie down upon it, your head to the
trunk of the tree.”
She hesitated.
“Do so!” I told her.
She lay, her back on the limb.
“Farther out,” I told her.
She edged, on her back, along the limb. Then she was more than five feet from
the trunk.
She shuddered.
“Let your arms hang free,” I said.
She did. The slave bracelets, one locked on her right wrist, dangled.
I then relocked her left wrist in the slave bracelets. Her wrists were now
locked under the branch and behind her. I then crossed her ankles and bound them
to the branch. Then, with another length of binding fiber, taken from my own
pouch, I bound her by the belly, tightly, to the branch.
She looked back at me, over her shoulder, fear in her eyes.
I climbed downward. The sleen is a burrowing animal. It seldom climbs. The
panther can climb, but it is accustomed to take its hunting scents from the
ground.
I expected the girl would be safe. If she were not, I remembered, as a Gorean,
that she had tried to kill me. If ought befell me, of course, it would not be
well for her. She was gagged, braceleted, and bound. I was confident that she
would wish me well in whatever enterprise I might be engaged. Though she was my
enemy and prisoner, her desires would be most fervid for my success.
The girl taken care of, I resumed my journey.
An Ahn before darkness I found the camp.
It was situated back from the bank of a small stream, one of the many tiny
tributaries of the Laurius which interlace the forest.
I eased myself upward into the branches of a tree, whence I might command a
better view.
It consisted of five huts, conical, of woven sapling and thatched, and was
surrounded by a small palisade of sharpened saplings. A rough gate, fastened
with vines, gave entrance into the camp. In the center of the camp there was a
cooking hole, banked with a circle of flat stones. On a wooden spit, set on
sticks, grease dropping into the fire and flaming, was a thigh of tabuk.
It smelled good. The smoke, in a thin line, trickled upward into the sky.
The thigh of tabuk was tended by a squatting panther girl, who, from time to
time, picked bits of meat from it and thrust them in her mouth. She sucked her
fingers clean. Over to one side another girl worked on a slave net, reworking
and reknotting the weighted cords.
Elsewhere two girls, sitting cross-legged, were playing a cat’s-cradle game,
matching one another’s intricate patterns with the twine. There were skillful.
This game is popular in the north, particularly in the villages. It is also
played frequently in Torvaldsland.
I saw, clearly, no other panther girls in or about the enclosure. I did see,
however, a movement within one of the huts, and I supposed that to be another
girl.
I saw no evidence of Talena. She might, of course, lie chained within one of the
dark huts. Perhaps the movement I had seen within the hut had been she. I did
not know.
One thing, however, seemed quite clear. Not all of Verna’s band was now within
the enclosure.
There was probably five or six girls there at the most.
Her band, most reports agreed, consisted of some fifteen women.
I looked at the girls in the enclosure. They did not know I regarded them. They
did not realize their camp had been found. They did not know that soon, perhaps
tomorrow, their camp would be stormed, and they would be captives, destined for
the iron and the slave markets of the south.
But we must move rapidly. I had learned from Grenna, my prisoner, that an
unusually large band of panther girls, under a woman named Hura, was even now
advancing toward these areas of the forests.
I smiled.
When Hura’s band arrived, ready to fight for these pasangs of forest, ready to
drive Verna’s band out, they would meet no opposition.
By that time Verna and her band would be my captives.
Hura’s band would find only an empty camp, and perhaps some signs of struggle.
But we must move swiftly.
Additional members of panther girls, entering these countries of forests, might
well confuse or complicate my plans.
I must conclude my business before their arrival. It did not seem it would be
difficult to do so. I wondered how it was that Hura had under her command so
many girls. Such bands of girls scarcely ever number more than twenty. Yet, if
Grenna was to be believed, following this Hura were a hundred or more armed
women.
I must not allow them to interfere with my plans.
I looked down into the camp, at the girls. I regarded them as a Gorean. They had
had their chance. They had refused to sell Talena to me. They had not dealt with
me. That had been their mistake. The lesson they would be taught would be sharp.
Let each of them, on the auction block, as the men bid upon them, consider how
their affairs might have been better conducted.
Two more girls arrived at the camp, and untied the gate, entered, and then
retied it.
I thought they would look well in slave chains.
I looked again about the camp. I saw some poles behind the huts, on which,
drying, were stretched the skins of four panthers. There were some boxes, some
kegs, near one of the huts.
There was not much else.
I expected, by nightfall, all, or most, of Verna’s band would have returned to
their slender stockade.
I slipped down from my hiding place, and disappeared in the forest.
“Take this captive,” I told Rim, “back to the Tesephone.”
I thrust Grenna toward him. I had again put her wrists in slave bracelets, and
bound them at her belly. She stumbled and fell to her knees, her head down, at
Rim’s feet.
She no longer wore her gag. It was not now necessary.
“I would prefer,” said Rim, “to join in the attack on her band, who once
enslaved me.”
“I recall,” I said, “and I fear that you might be too precipitate.”
Rim smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.
It was now almost impossible to detect where the two-inch strip had been shaved
on his head, from the forehead to the back of his neck.
“I will accompany you,” said Arn.
“Good,” I said.
Arn was eyeing Grenn
a appreciatively. She saw his eyes, and put down her head
again, swiftly.
I was pleased that Arn liked her. Perhaps I would later give her to him.
“At the Tesephone,” I said, indicating Grenna with my foot, “brand her, and see
that she is enslaved. After that, see to the wounds of the slave.”
The girl moaned.
“Yes, Captain,” said Rim. He reached down and lifted her up, lightly in his
arms.
How beautiful women are, I thought.
Rim carried her from the small fire, and moved into the darkness.
I looked about, at the nine men with me.
“Let us sleep now,” I said. “We shall awaken two Ahn before dawn. We will then
march on the camp of Verna.”
“Good,” said Arn.
I lay down on the leaves, within the ring of sharpened saplings we had set about
our small camp.
I closed my eyes. In the morning I would have Talena back. Who knew how high
might be raised the chair of Bosk?
Things were going well.
I fell asleep.
8 We Wait in the Camp of Verna
There is a Gorean saying that free women, raised gently in the high cylinders,
in their robes of concealment, unarmed, untrained in weapons, may, by the
slaver, be plucked like flowers.
There is no such saying pertaining to panther girls.
Needless to say, there are various techniques for the acquisition of slaves,
male and female. Much depends of course, on the number of slavers, the nature of
their quarry, and the particulars of a given chase or hunt.
The fact that we numbered ten, including myself, and that the girls of Verna’s
band numbered some fifteen, and that they were skilled with their weapons, and
dangerous, dictated the nature of our approach.
I had not wished to bring a large number of men through the forest with me, for
they would have been difficult to conceal. Further, I wish to leave a full
garrison at the Tesephone, to protect the ship should here be any danger at the
river. It was my original intention to bring with me merely five, but, when Arn
and his men arrived at the camp, I permitted them to join us. Outlaws move well
in the forests, moving, like panther girls, with swiftness and stealth, and
leaving little trace of their passage. With the element of surprise, and my plan
of attack, I did not think we would need many men. Five, I had conjectured,
would have been sufficient. I smiled to myself. Perhaps it was an arrogance of
my Gorean blood that had led me to my decision. There is more glory to take more
slaves with fewer men. It redounds to the skill and credit of the slaver. Too,
Verna’s band, earlier in the forest, had irritated me. It would gratify me, and
give them a most humiliating memory to carry with them into their slavery, that
they, the entire band, had been taken by a mere handful of males. They might be
panther girls, but they were only women. We would take them easily.
We had weighed various modes of attack. One of the simplest and least dangerous
we had immediately rejected, because of the time involved. It was to besiege the
girls in their stockade, cutting them off from food and water, and merely wait
until they, hungering and thirsting, following our orders, threw down their
weapons, stripped themselves and emerged, one by one, as we called them forth,
surrendering to our binding fiber. A similar plan, but swifter, requires setting
fire to the camp and its encircling wall. This forces the girls into the forest
where, theoretically, they maybe separately taken. There are many dangers here,
however. The girls usually emerge armed and dangerous, rapidly scattering. It
can be extremely perilous to attempt to capture such women. Further, in the
confusion, girls may escape. Perhaps most to be dreaded is the spread of fire to
the forest itself. This is something which, perhaps surprisingly to the mind of
Earth, fills Goreans with great horror. It is not simply that there is great
danger to the slaver themselves, in the shiftings and blazings of such a
conflagration, but rather that the forest, the sheltering and beautiful forest,
is felt as being injured. Goreans care for their world. They love the sky, the
plains, the sea, the rain in the summer, the snow in the winter. They will
sometimes stand and watch clouds. The movement of grass in the wind is very
beautiful to them. More than one Gorean poet had sung of the leaf of a Tur tree.
I have known warriors who cared for the beauty of small flowers. I personally
would not care to be the man responsible for the destruction of a Gorean forest.
It is not unknown for them to be hunted down and burned alive, their ashes
scattered in expiation by mourning Goreans among the charred wood and blackened
stumps. Sometimes it takes, according to the Goreans, a generation for the
forest to forgive its injury, and return to men, gracious and forgiving, in all
its beauty.
“No”, I said, “we will not use fire.” A further consideration, of course, was
that we were now in the late summer, and the dangers of fire were maximized.
Arn and his men agreed.
One of the most delicate modes of enslavement, and requiring great skill, is to
enter the stockade of the panther girls under the cover of darkness and then,
one by one, hut by hut, following the sound of their breathing, to take them.
The slightest sound may of course, alert the entire band. One locates a sleeping
girl and then, swiftly, as she awakens squirming, forces a heavy wadding into
her mouth, fastening it in place with strips of cloth and leather. One must
then, swiftly, tie her hands behind her back and bind her ankles. One then
moves, stealthily, to the next girl. If all proceeds well, each girl, in the
light of dawn, looks about herself and sees that each of her comrades, too, is
gagged and bound as helplessly as she herself is. In the night they have been
taken slave. This procedure, however, calls for great delicacy and skill.
We had decided on a simpler mode of attack, that would utilize the first light
of day, taking the girls before they had fully awakened, or could realize what
was happening to them.
We would use sleen nets, casting them over more than one girl at a time, tieing
them together, making it impossible for them to utilize their weapons. We could
then stand over them with knives, preventing them from freeing themselves. At
our leisure, one by one, perhaps after having breakfast in their camp, we could
then remove them from the nets and chain them.
We circled the terrain of the camp with great care.
It is most important to swiftly, silently, dispose of any sentries.
But we found none in the encircling forest. We saw none within the palisade.
“They are not wise,” whispered Arn, “not to have left sentries.”
We crawled to the gate, and there, quietly, I studied the knot that held it, so,
if necessary, I could retie it. It was not a difficult know. It was not a
signature knot. Its purpose was only to hold the gate against the pushings and
shoulderings of animals.
I untied the knot and , one by one, we slipped within the palisade.
We unrolled the sleen nets and loosened the knives in our sheaths.
The ground was wet and damp from the dew. The forest was cool. I could make out
the shape of Arn’s head, near me, as he waited.
We heard the throaty warbling of a tiny horned gim.
Then we saw the first sparkle of the morning, the glistening of the dampness of
leaves and grass.
I could now, rather well, make out the features of Arn’s face. I nodded to him,
and the others. There were five huts, and ten of us. By twos, sleen nets slung
between us, we moved to the huts.
I nodded to Arn.
He gave a high whistle, shrill and sudden, and we, and the others, thrust
through the portals of the hut, casting the sleen nets to encompass whatever lie
within.
I gave a cry of rage.
We caught nothing.
In a moment other men came to our hut. “They are gone,” said one.
“The camp is empty,” said another.
We looked at one another.
Arn was furious.
“Reconnoiter,” I told two men, “and swiftly, and well.”
The men and Arn, looked at one another, apprehensively. They had only then
realized, with full awareness, that we ourselves were now penned within the
stockade, which might now serve as the same trap for us as it might have served
before for panther girls.
The two men swiftly went out to scan the surrounding forest.
I did not think that panther girls laid in wait outside, for we had made a
careful examination of the area before we had entered the stockade. Still, I did
not wish to take the chance that we might have missed them, or, even, that they
might have withdrawn before our examination of the area, intending to return
when we might be within the stockade. The most likely hypothesis was that they,
unaware of our presence in the vicinity, had, on business of their own, left the
stockade before dawn. They might have attacks, or hunts, of their own to attend
to. Perhaps they had learned of the advance of the girls of Hura toward their
territory and had gone out to make reconnaissance, or oppose them. Perhaps they
were lying in ambush, pasangs away, for a party of Hura or Marlenus, or for
other reasons, had decided to abandon their camp?
I looked about. No, there was too much left. And there was no indication of
hurried flight.
I saw spears about, and bundles of arrows.
Panther girls would not have left them. They would return.
Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt Page 15
