"I am pleased," said Kisu, happily, wiping the sweat from his brow.
"Why?" I asked.
"Come here," he said.
"Be careful!" I said to him. He was wading out into the water.
"Come here!" he called.
I waded after him, some forty or fifty feet out into the current. It was only to our knees there.
"Look!" he said, pointing.
From the height of the falls we could see for pasangs behind us downriver. It was not only a spectacular but also a marvelous coign of vantage.
"I knew it would be so!" he cried, slapping his thigh in pleasure.
I looked, the hair on the back of my neck rising.
"Tende! Tende!" called Kisu. "Come here, now!"
The girl, moving carefully, waded to where we stood. Kisu seized her by the back of the neck and faced her downriver. "See, my pretty slave?" he asked.
"Yes, my master," she said, frightened.
"It is he," said Kisu. "He is coming for you!"
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Hurry now to the shore," he said. "Build a fire, prepare food, Slave."
"Yes, Master," she said, commanded, hurrying from us to address herself to her tasks.
I looked into the distance, downriver, half shutting my eyes against the glare from the water.
Downriver, several pasangs away, small but unmistakable, moving in our direction, was a fleet of canoes and river vessels. There must have been in the neighborhood of a hundred, oared river galleys, the balance of the fleet which had been prepared for Shaba's originally projected penetration of the Ua, and perhaps again as many canoes. If there were crews of fifty on the galleys and from five to ten men in a canoe, the force behind us must have ranged somewhere between five and six thousand men.
"It is Bila Huruma!" shouted Kisu in triumph.
"So this is why you accompanied me on the Ua?" I asked.
"I would have come with you anyway, to help you, for you are my friend," said Kisu. "But our ways, happily, led us the same direction. Is that not a splendid coincidence?"
"Yes, splendid," I smiled.
"You see now what was my plan?" he asked.
"Your mysterious plan?" I grinned.
"Yes," he said, happily.
"I thought this might be it," I said. "But I think you may have miscalculated."
"I could not in battle beat Bila Huruma," said Kisu. "His askaris were superior to my villagers. But now, as I have stolen Tende, his projected companion, I have lured him into the jungle. I need now only lead him on and on, until he is slain in the jungle, or until, bereft of men and supplies, I need only turn back and meet him, as man to man, as warrior to warrior."
I looked at him.
"Thus," said Kisu, "in destroying Bila Huruma, I will destroy the empire."
"It is an intelligent and bold plan," I said, "but I think you may have miscalculated."
"How is that?" asked Kisu.
"Do you truly think that Bila Huruma," I asked, "who owns or is companion to perhaps hundreds of women would pursue you into the jungle at great risk to himself and his empire to get back one girl, a girl whom he doubtless realizes has by now been reduced to slavery, and has thus been rendered politically worthless, and a girl who was never more to him to begin with than a convenience in a minor political situation on the Ngao coast?"
"Yes," said Kisu… "It will be a matter of principle for him."
"It might be a matter of principle for you," I said, "but I doubt that it would be a matter of principle for Bila Huruma. There are principles and there are principles. For a man such as Bila Huruma I conjecture that the principle of preserving his empire would take precedence over matters of minor personal concern."
"But Bila Huruma is on the river," said Kisu.
"Probably," I said.
"Thus," said Kisu, "you are wrong."
"Perhaps," I said.
"Do you think he follows you?" asked Kisu.
"No," I said, "I am unimportant to him."
"Thus," said Kisu, "it is I whom he follows."
"Perhaps," I said. "Perhaps you are right."
Kisu then turned and, happily, waded back to the shore.
"Remove your garment," said Kisu to Tende.
"Yes, Master," she said. "Follow me," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You others may come, too," he said.
Wading, we followed Kisu and Tende out toward the center of the river. There was there, overlooking the falls, a large, flat rock. We climbed onto the rock. From its surface we could see downriver, and, pasangs back, the flotilla of canoes and galleys of the Ubar, Bila Huruma.
"What are you going to do with me, Master?" asked Tende.
"I am going to dance you naked," he said. He thrust her forward on the rock, facing downriver.
Tende stood there, trembling, dressed only in her slave beads.
"Bila Huruma!" called Kisu. "I am Kisu!" He pointed at the girl. "This is the woman, Tende, who was to have been your companion! I took her from you! I made her my slave!"
Bila Huruma, of course, if he were with the flotilla, as we conjectured, could not have heard Kisu. The distance was too great. Too, had he been within fifty yards he probably could not have heard him, because of the roar of the falls. Moreover, so far away was the flotilla, I had little doubt but what we could not be seen from its position. We could see the flotilla largely because of the size of its galleys and the number of its vessels, both canoes and galleys. The canoes were almost invisible from where we stood. Had there been but a single canoe it would have been extremely difficult to detect. Similarly, from the. position of the flotilla we would be, of course, specks upon a larger speck, for most practical purposes invisible. I had never seen glasses of the builders in the palace of Bila Huruma. Shaba, however, I was sure, from Anango, would possess such an instrument. It would make him difficult to approach.
"This is the woman, Tende," called Kisu, facing his distant enemy, shouting against the roar of the falls, pointing to Tende. "She was to have been your companion! I took her away from you! I made her mine! I now exhibit her naked before you as my slave!"
"He cannot see you or hear you!" shouted Ayari.
"That does not matter," laughed Kisu. He gave Tende a happy slap below the smell of the back.
"Oh!" she cried.
"Dance, Tende!" said he. He began to sing and clap, looking downriver.
"That is a slave song!" she cried.
He stopped clapping and singing, and regarded her.
"There are white slaves present, Master!" she cried.
He looked upon her sternly.
"I dance, my master," she cried, frightened. She flexed her legs, freeing her body to move, and extended her arms gracefully to the right, the right arm further advanced than the left.
"Is she free?" asked Ayari.
"No," said Kisu.
"Have her put her arms over her head, wrists back to back," said Ayari.
"Do so," said Kisu.
Tende complied. "How lovely that is," said Kisu.
"I have seen it done in Schendi," said Ayari. 'it is one of the ways in which a slave may begin a dance."
I smiled to myself. That was true. The lovely posture which Tende had just assumed was undeniably one of the initial postures of certain slave dances. It is widely known on Gor, of course, not just in Schendi. It is, for example, quite familiar in Port Kar and, far to the southeast of that port, and somewhere far to the north and east of our present position, in the Tahari. Slave dances, of course, may begin in dozens of ways, sometimes even with the girl roped or chained at a man's feet. I looked at Tende. To be sure, only a slave dance could begin from such a posture. No free woman, for example, would dare to place herself in such a position before Gorean free men, unless perhaps, weary of her misery and frustration, she was begging them, almost explicitly, to put her in a collar. There are many stories of Gorean free women, sometimes of high caste, who, as a lark or in a spirit of bold play, dared to dance in a paga tavern. Often, perhaps to their horror, they found themselves that very night hooded and gagged, locked in close chains, lying on their back, their legs drawn up, fastened in a wagon, chained by the neck and ankles, their small bodies bruised on its rough boards as they, helpless beneath a rough tarn blanket, are carried through the gates of their city.