To my amazement I felt Kenneth thrusting a key into the locks on my manacles.
"He is coming now, with others!" said Kenneth.
"Out of the wagon!" Barus ordered another man.
The manacles were pulled away from my wrists and cast through the bars into the wagon.
"Unhood yourselfl" said Kenneth. He was then opening the manacles of another man. I fumbled with the buckles and then drew the hood away. The fresh air felt cold and wonderful. "Unhood yourself!" said Kenneth to another man.
"They will be here in an Ehn or less," cried Kenneth.
"Out of the wagon!" ordered Barns, addressing himself to the last man.
I looked back and to the right. There were two columns of smoke in that direction, far off. I also saw what I took, at first glance, to be a flock of birds in the sky, back and to the right.
"They are coming quickly!" said Kenneth.
I then realized that what I saw in the sky, in the distance, were birds, indeed, but tarns, and that doubtless mounted upon them, armed and purposeful, were men.
"What is going on?" cried one of the slaves.
Kenneth pointed to the sky. "Tarnsmen!" he said.
"Men or Ar?" asked a slave.
"That, or worse," said Kenneth. He then freed the last man. "Unhood yourself," he ordered him. The man, blinking, did so.
I watched the approaching riders, some pasang or so distant, some four or five hundred feet in the air.
"What do you think they will do with you?" asked Kenneth.
We stood there, uncertain, confused.
"Do you think you are lovely women, naked and alluring, whom they will simply chain up and take back to their camp, to be fitted with slave collars?"
We looked at him.
"Run!" said Kenneth. "Scatter!"
Confused, startled, we fled, scattering in various directions.
I looked back once and saw Kenneth and Barus, too, hurrying from the vicinity of the wagon. I did not look back again until I had attained the refuge of an extended, linear terrain of trees and brush bordering a small stream. I saw the wagon burning. The tarnsmen then, in a moment or two, again took flight. They did not pursue us. They returned toward the twin columns of smoke in the distance. I saw the tharlarion which had drawn the wagon, cut loose and stampeded, lumbering away. I was breathing heavily. My heart was pounding wildly. I felt with my fingers the heavy collar of iron, with its ring, fastened on my neck.
26 I MAKE THE LADY FLORENCE MY PRISONER; WE FLEE THROUGH THE TUNNELS
There was a tearing of cloth. "No!" she cried, twisting away from him, terrified, running to the wall.
He beckoned to her with his left hand. His right hand held a sword. "Come here, my beauty," he coaxed her.
"No, please!" she cried. She was breathing heavily. She was terrified. Her right hand held her robes about her left shoulder, from which they had been torn.
The rough fellow, bearded, grinning, sheathed his sword.
"Show me mercy!" she begged.
"I will show you the mercy which a master shows his slave," he laughed.
He approached her and, as she wept, he tore down her robes to the waist.
I heard a girl screaming in the outer hall. It was probably Bonnie.
The rough fellow then, laughing, snapped slave bracelets on the wrists of the Lady Florence.
She cried out with fear as I seized the fellow by the back of the neck, thrusting my hand up under the helmet, and hurled him head-first into a wall. Stunned he turned about. I was on him in an instant. He could not free his sword or dagger. I thrust his helmeted face back again, the side of it, forcibly, against the wall. I then jerked loose the helmet strap and, by the crest, tore away the helmet, backward, almost breaking the fellow's neck. I then turned him about, measuring him. He could not defend himself. He must wait for my blow. I struck him on the left side of the jaw. His head snapped to the side and he sank, senseless, to the floor. I then stepped back. He was senseless at my feet.
"Jason!" cried the Lady Florence.
I looked at her.
She reddened, blushing from the waist up. "I am braceleted!" she said, lifting her small, encircled wrists.
"You look well in slave bracelets," I told her.
She blushed, even more darkly.
"Free me," she said.
I regarded her.
"Free me!" she begged.
I went to the pouch of the fallen man and found there the key to the slave bracelets. I took them from her wrists. She rubbed her wrists, for the man had braceleted her tightly. "How horrifying is the feel of slave steel on a woman's body," she said.
"It is not horrifying," I said. "It is joyful and delicious."
"Surely I am the judge of that," she said.
"If it was horrifying," I said, "you would not now be sexually excited and filled with desire."
"I am not!" she said.
"Do you think such things cannot be told from your breathing, the mottling of your skin, the condition of your nipples, the timbre of your voice?"
"No," she said, "no!" Quickly she pulled up the robes about her body, holding them at her throat. I could still see her shoulders.
I shrugged.
"There are others about," she said, frightened. "More brigands."
"I am well aware of that," I said. "And these, or others like them, have struck at the holdings, too, of Dorto and Gordon."
"Where are the guardsmen of Vonda?" she asked.
"If any have escaped in the direction of Vonda," I said, "perhaps they may be here tomorrow, by nightfall."
"Tomorrow, by nightfall?" she said, in dismay.
"Perhaps," I said.
Then we were suddenly quiet, for we heard men in the hall outside. We heard, too, the crying of a girl. We stood, not moving. Through a crack in the door we saw two men pass.
One of the men was dragging a girl, nude, at his side, she bent over, his hand in her hair. It was Bonnie.
"Save me from these men," moaned the Lady Florence.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why they will make me a slave," she said.
"You would make a lovely slave," I told her.
"Please, Jason," she said, intensely, looking up at me. "Please, Jason!" How small and weak then seemed the Mistress, how pathetic and needful, and how far removed from the proud and imperious woman who had once, so casually and insolently, commanded me. "Please, Jason!" she said.
I looked down at her, not speaking.
"I will free you," she said suddenly, intensely.
I did not speak.
"You are free," she said. "You are free."
She fled from me to a small vanity by the wall, near her bed. She seized out a key from a drawer and fled again to me, holding her robes about her with her left hand.
"Remove the collar," I told her.
"Please, Jason," she said.
"Remove it," I said.
Blushing she allowed her robes to fall about her hips and, with two hands, holding the collar with her left and inserting the key with her right, she removed it from my throat. She bent down and placed the collar and key on the floor. She hesitated, for the briefest instant, realizing that she had bent her body before me, and then, quickly, she straightened up. I still held the slave bracelets I had removed from her in my right hand. The key I had placed in a fold in the cloth belt of my half tunic.
She smiled. "You are now a free man, Jason," she whispered.
"Today, earlier," I said, "I defeated Krondar, a fighting slave of Ar, purchased by Miles of Vonda."
"My congratulations on your victory," she said.
"I want a woman," I said. "Do not touch your robes." Her hands hesitated, but did not touch her robes. Her body was small and soft, and beautifully rounded, before me. How incredibly beautiful women are!
"Of course," she said, nervously. "That is understandable. You may have your pick."
I threw the slave bracelets to the bed. They landed on the wide bed, striking into the soft covers. She looked at them, nervously.
"Jason?" she asked.