John Norman

by Time Slave

  Suddenly her left foot splashed in cold water. She cried out in misery, startled. She stopped, and felt about herself in the darkness. She heard the dripping of water. She scraped her right forearm on the stone. There were other passages, she knew, some hundred yards beyond the crevice, passages other than that leading to the cave of the hands, the animal paintings, which had once been shown to her by Old Woman. She sank to her knees, moaning, disoriented. She shuddered. She realized she did not know where she was. She was lost.

  From somewhere behind her, seemingly from far away, she heard shouts.

  She crouched very still, hoping that her pursuers would choose other tunnels, would give up the chase.

  But the noises came closer. Then, again, as though from afar this time, she saw the dim flicker of torches.

  She struggled to her feet. Gasping, weeping, she put forth her hands, her fingers, and felt the stone sides of the tunnel. Irrationally, heedlessly, she sped forward. The torches, the noises, were behind her. Then suddenly, crying out, she plunged forward; she seized at nothingness; sprawling, knees and hands scraped, she struck stone some two feet below; she lay there sobbing; then, crawling, weeping, holding her hand before her, she moved deeper into the tunnel; she crawled for some four to five minutes; she could hear the sound of pursuit from behind, louder now; then to her misery she felt solid stone before her. In the darkness groping, frantically, she tried to discover an opening. Wildly she stood up. She felt about the sides, and before her, and over her head, and at her feet. There was no opening. She had fled into a blind tunnel. She sank to her knees in the darkness at the wall of stone; she leaned against it, putting the side of her face against the cool, granular surface which prevented her further advance.

  She rose to her feet and put her back against the wall of stone, putting her hands back, feeling it with the palms of her hands.

  She watched the torches growing closer, heard the sounds of the men. She saw them then, far down the tunnel, stepping down from the ledge from which she had fallen, then approaching. There were four torches, six men, primitive hunters. She pressed back against the wall, in terror, watching them approach. They came closer. Then the first of them lifted his torch, and she was illuminated. Her hair was wild; her eyes were deep, frantic, filled with fear; she wore the brief, wrap-around skirt of deerskin, exposing the left thigh; about her neck was knotted the several loops of the necklace of shells, of claws and leather. She faced them, a bare-breasted, cornered, primitive woman. But, too, she was Brenda Hamilton, a woman of our time, at the mercy of primitive hunters. Inwardly she moaned. Had she hoped to elude them? They could follow her even in the twisting darkness of the caves; had she been calm they could have followed her, by the simple woman smell she could not help but leave; but she had been running, terrified, broken out in the sweat, the unmistakable secretions, of driven feminine quarry; she had been game to them; the chase was now ended; the snare was readied; they had followed their girl quarry, their woman fugitive, easily; the outcome had never been in doubt; behind her, marking her trail, belying her passage, like a traitor’s signal, perfidious, treacherous, had hung the perfume, stimulatory to hunters, excitatory to predatory males, of her terror; the female fear-smell. She, caught, had had no chance. The others, too, lifted their torches. They regarded her, she could see, with pleasure, with anticipation. Their leader, a heavily bearded fellow, lifted his hand. In it, coiled, were several narrow loops of leather thongs. He grinned. Then he handed his torch to another man and approached her. In his hand were the thongs. She could not take her eyes from them. He held them up before her. She felt almost hypnotized. She could not take her eyes from them. In his hand were the thongs with which to bind her. She felt her shoulder blades, the deliciousness of her ass, press back against the stone.

  Then there was another torch, from behind the men.

  “Gunther!” cried Hamilton.

  “Where are the hunters?” asked Gunther.

  “They are gone,” said Hamilton.

  “These are the Weasel People,” said Gunther, indicating with his head the men about.

  “Oh, no,” whispered Hamilton.

  “Blood enemies of the Men,” said Gunther. He smiled. “And you are a woman of the Men.”

  “Protect me, Gunther,” whispered Hamilton.

  Gunther stood there, the men of the Weasel People parting to admit him. His torch was in his left hand. Across his back was strapped his rifle. In his right hand, reddish in the light of the torch, was the drawn Luger. She saw, on his left wrist, the watch which, months before, Cloud had brought back from the darkness, when he and William had been driven from the camp.

  “Save me, Gunther!” cried Hamilton.

  He regarded her. Then he turned away, carrying the torch, and made his way back down the passage.

  “Gunther!” screamed Hamilton. “Don’t leave me!”

  Then she saw again only the thongs in the hand of the primitive leader, the savage. These were the thongs of the Weasel People. The Weasel People were the blood enemies of the Men, and she was a woman of the Men. She pressed back. At her back was the wall of stone. The leader reached for her. She screamed. The others crowded about.

  23

  Hamilton opened her eyes. Every bone and muscle in her body seemed sore. She tried, weakly, to separate her hands. They were thonged tightly behind her back. Butterfly lay near her, her small body similarly secured. “Turtle,” said Butterfly, tears in her eyes. Hamilton looked about herself, at the other women, crowded together, bound, at the close, rounded walls of roughly fitted stone. She sat up, putting her back against the stone. She looked up, toward the top of the circular, stone-lined pit, some ten feet above, some eight feet in diameter, to the grille of heavy branches, weighted down with stones, closing it. She was puzzled that the stone had been roughly shaped. The blocks were large, some as much as a yard in width. Their prison reminded her of a well, save that it was too wide, and too shallow. In the pit the prisoners were naked. They had been stripped days ago at the shelters, and not permitted clothing afterwards. In the clearing before the shelters, the necklaces, proclaiming them of the Men, had been cut from their necks with stone knives and thrown aside. They had then been switched and put in throat coffle, thonged by the neck with rawhide, and given their burdens, the spoils of the camp of the Men, flint, fur, salt, weapons, tools, dried roots, dried meat. The journey had been a nightmare for them, hurried, switched, exhausted, driven beasts of burden. They had been forced to move under the switch even after dark. The Weasel People had no wish to encounter the Men.

  “Turtle,” said Butterfly.

  Hamilton smiled at the girl. She crept near to Hamilton, and put her head against her arm. “Do not cry,” whispered Hamilton. Butterfly put her head down, and lay close to Hamilton.

  Hamilton’s attention was caught by a scattering of small objects on the floor of the pit. They were tiny, and seemed to be of some vegetable matter. She did not understand what they could be.

  She moved her abused body, then closed her eyes in pain and remained still.

  “I am afraid of him,” she heard Cloud whisper to Antelope.

  Hamilton opened her eyes and regarded Cloud, who was kneeling. Cloud was bound as the others. “What will he do with me?” asked Cloud.

  Hamilton did not envy Cloud, for it had been she who had, with the strength of the Men behind her, thrown Gunther’s and William’s belongings to their feet when they had been driven from the camp, who had struck Gunther with a switch, herding him into the darkness, who had taken his watch. In the cave, when Hamilton had been captured, she had seen that Gunther had already recovered the watch. Cloud had been captured shortly before Hamilton had. She looked at Cloud. Cloud was trembling. “What will he do with me?” asked Cloud of Hamilton.

  “I do not know,” said Hamilton. She did not envy Cloud. Antelope kissed Cloud on the shoulder, and Cloud put her head, eyes wide, against Antelope’s shoulder.

  Hamilton looked up, through the grill
e. The pit was not open to the sky. Some five feet above the grille, on poles, was a roof of branches and thatch. Rain could not fall into the pit.

  Hamilton could not understand the meaning of such a construction. She did not think it was to shelter female slaves. No solicitation had been shown to them in the journey from the caves of the Men. She looked about herself. They were the females of hated enemies, and the Weasel People, with primitive arrogance, with primitive brutality, had treated them precisely as what they were.

  Flower looked at her. The right side of Flower’s head bore a deep bruise. She had been the first female of the Men taken. From a ledge at the shelters, Hamilton had seen her assailant brutally club her senseless to his feet, then jerk her hands behind her back and tie her. Flower looked away from Hamilton, miserable.

  Ugly Girl was sitting, like Hamilton, with her back against the stone. Her eyes were open, and she was staring across the stone floor to the wall opposite her, seeing nothing. Hamilton looked at her broad head, the simplicity of the eyes, the almost chinless face, the heavy, lank hair, the squat, breasted torso, the short, thick legs. Hamilton shivered. Ugly Girl’s wrists, like those of the others, were crossed and tied tightly behind her back. It is almost as if she were human, thought Hamilton. Why should they tie her like the rest of us? She is not even human. Why did they take her? What would they want her for? The thought crossed Hamilton’s mind that they might have taken her for food. Perhaps the Weasel People were cannibals? She shuddered at the thought that they might all be being kept for food. But she had not heard that the Weasel People ate human flesh. Perhaps they only ate those women who did not sufficiently please them? Hamilton shuddered. She knew she would do what was necessary to survive. She was a primitive woman. She closed her eyes. Pride was not a luxury a primitive woman could afford. To avoid being eaten she knew she would do anything, and eagerly. She opened her eyes and glared across the flooring to Ugly Girl, feeling a sudden hostility for the simple, doglike creature. When Hamilton had first been caught, held by the hair, on the roof of the cliffs, Ugly Girl, wickedly, with ferocity, biting, scratching, had thrown herself on her captor, and he had released her, and she had fled. Turning back, she had seen that Ugly Girl, in turn, had been caught. Ugly Girl had held out her hand to her, but she had not returned to help, but had turned away, continuing her flight. Surely it was irrational that both of them should be apprehended. But later, in a blind tunnel, trapped, cornered, she, too, clever, modern woman had felt the relentless snare thongs of captors. Ugly Girl, after this, had not looked at her. She would look past her, not seeing her. This infuriated Hamilton. “Sow!” said Hamilton to Ugly Girl, in the language of the Men. Ugly Girl did not look at her, nor seem to listen. What would they want with her, Hamilton asked herself. She was angry that they even kept Ugly Girl with them, as though she might be human. She was bound as might have been a human female! Did the Weasel People intend this as a humiliation, an insult, to the women of the Men, their new slaves? Hamilton was furious.

  Nine females of the men had been caught, Cloud and Antelope; Butterfly and Flower; Ugly Girl; Turtle; a pregnant female, whose name was Feather; and two others, who had been slow of foot, Squirrel and Awl. Several others bad escaped. Some had not been at the shelters at the time of the attack. Some had scattered and fled successfully. Nurse, and one other, Hamilton knew, had fled over the roof of the cliffs and escaped down the other side. Short Leg bad not been caught. Old Woman had been thrown down the side of the cliff. Hamilton did not know if she had lived or not. The children had broken and run and the men, intent on adult females, had not pursued them. She had seen one child struck at and bloodied before the shelters. She did not know if he had survived or not.

  For a time Hamilton had hoped that they would be trailed by the men and recaptured. But, day by day, her hopes had diminished. The first night there had been a heavy rain, after which Gunther, who seemed to lead these men, turned his trail to the side. If the Men followed the trail to the rain, they would have no way of knowing, after the rain, that it had been diverted. They would follow a line which, in effect, would, after a time, have been erased. It would be rational to suppose that the line, even though erased, would have continued in the same direction. Gunther’s cunning had foreseen this reasoning, and be had diverted their trek. The Weasel People had been thorough. The hands of the female prisoners, who were herded in throat coffle, were thonged, usually to the burdens they bore. Hamilton’s hands had been tied at the sides of the squarish bundle of furs which she had been forced to carry in the common manner of primitive women, balanced on her head. Ugly Girl’s hands, differently, had been tied together before her body and fastened, by two loops, at her belly. On her back was tied a heavy sack of flint, loot from the shelters. She had walked almost bent over, her thighs red from switching. One of the men of the Weasel People, other than those who were the rear guard of the march, followed the coffle line, to see that no girl attempted to leave a trail. Another, following him, with a branch, with leaves, had obliterated footprints. On the second night of the march it had again rained, and Gunther had, again, altered the course of the march. The minds of primitives, even those of the Men, Hamilton knew, could not follow the trail, concealed by one of great experience, a master. Hamilton hated Gunther, but she could not but respect him. William had not been with the attacking party. Even at the shelters of the Men he had seemed to exert little influence over Gunther. Gunther was in his element, leading men. With his rifle be was a captain, a hero, king in this savage world. Hamilton had seen Cloud, bound, groveling at his feet in terror. Gunther had scarcely looked at her. He would make her wait. He was, she knew, saving her for later, for his leisure. At night the women of the Men, alternately, the head of one to the feet of the next, had been thrown from their feet, and bound, wrists behind their backs, and the neck and ankles of each tied to the ankles and neck of the next, each girl, thus, besides her wrists being twice secured once by ankles, once by throat. Hamilton had hoped, the first night, to attack with her teeth the bonds of the girl next to her. Then she, and the others, as they were on the following nights as well, had been gagged. Escape was impossible. Primitive thongs, tightly knotted did not slip. In the morning the girls had been released, jerked to their feet their spoor covered with dirt, and put again in coffle. On the fourth morning, the men of the Weasel People, herding the coffle, came to a river. Here to the dismay of the females, there were four rafts, already built and concealed, waiting. The captives, bound hand and foot, and the loot, were placed on the rough, vinethonged logs. With long poles these rafts were then thrust out into the current. Before she had been thonged hand and foot, and thrown to the rafts, Ugly Girl, doubtless in misery and fear, had soiled herself. Hamilton had been disgusted. Ever since Ugly Girl had attempted to rescue her on the cliffs, and she had not reciprocated, but fled, Hamilton had hated Ugly Girl. See, had thought Hamilton to herself, how simple, how stupid, how repulsive she is! She has even soiled herself! She shuddered in repulsion. To be coffled with such an animal, as though she might, too, have been human, as though she might have been of the same sort as she, was found by Hamilton to be degrading, humiliating. It insulted all the women of the Men, perhaps Hamilton most of all, for she retained something of the refined sensibilities of a modern woman.

  Hamilton sat with her back against the stone, bound, imprisoned with the others. She looked up, through the grille of branches, to the roof of thatch some feet above it. Hamilton was less fastidious now than she had been.

  She looked across to Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl had again, to Hamilton’s contempt, when the rafts had landed, on the other side of the river, perhaps two hundred miles from where they had entered upon the river, soiled herself. She recalled how irritated, how scornful, she had been.

  But now she thought less of such matters. She tried again to free the wrists bound behind her back, weakly. The women of the Men, bound had now been long in the cell. Even she, Hamilton, had been unable to help herself. She looked up again at
the grille. She hated the men of the Weasel People!

  “How long will you keep us here?” she cried out in anger, looking to the grille.

  The other women looked at her in puzzlement. Hamilton heard a girl’s laugh from `above. Since they had been placed in the cell, they had seen, once, only two girls, looking down upon them; one had been fair complexioned with long, bright red hair, the other had been dark-eyed, a darkhaired, short. Both had worn hide tunics, concealing their breasts. It was now these two again who, hearing Hamilton’s cry, looked again down on them. They did so furtively, and Hamilton knew that it must be that they were forbidden to do so. The red-haired girl looked down, contemptuously. She hissed something in anger down at them, and, with a switch, sharply, struck twice one of the branches of the grille. Hamilton winced, as though she might have been struck.

  “You will have us all beaten,” whispered Flower to her. “Be silent!”

  Hamilton heard a man’s voice warn the girls above away from the grille and, giggling, they quickly fled away.

  “Will they beat me?” asked Butterfly of Hamilton.

  “If the men permit it,” said Hamilton. She could well remember how it had been when she had been only a stranger, a mere captured female brought to the camp of the Men by Tree. Could not Butterfly remember? She, Butterfly, though then fed with the children, had been cruel to her. Did she now expect to be treated differently?

  “Lift your body to the men,” said Hamilton to Butterfly. “If you please them enough they may protect you sometimes from the women.”

  Butterfly looked in anguish at Flower.

  “Turtle is right,” said Flower. “We have no choice,” said Flower. “We are only females.” Then she looked at Hamilton. “I will please them most,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” said Hamilton. “Perhaps not.”

  Hamilton then closed her eyes again and leaned back against the stone. She wondered if Old Woman was dead. She had seen her thrown, tumbling and sprawling, down the slope of the cliff to the clearing below. Tears came to Hamilton’s eyes. In her own attempt to escape, Hamilton, instinctively, had fled to the cave entrance which led, by various passages, to the cave of the Men, the cave of the drawings. It was the deepest, most hidden cave in the cliffs, and she had wished to hide there. In the darkness she had taken a wrong turning. She had stumbled into another tunnel, one of several side tunnels, one in which she had soon been trapped. But Hamilton, a quarter of an hour after her capture, bruised and aching, half in shock, scarcely able to walk, wrists bound, on a leather neck tether, had been dragged into the cave of the Men, behind captors. They had found it. She watched while, with rocks, and spear points, reaching high places, they systematically defaced the walls, scraping away the glories which Drawer, years before, had placed there. Then she was dragged after them. Perhaps they wished to injure or impair the magic of the Men. Perhaps, in their hatred, they wished only to destroy what was beautiful. But when they left the antelope the bison, the lions were gone. Even the hands, reaching for what Hamilton did not know, nor even Old Woman, were scraped away.