Fleetingly, the trader once more regretted the loss—unavoidable as it had been—of the third nomad boy, then shrugged, ruminating, “Ain’t no good to fret over spilt milk, I reckon. Mean as thet little bastid was, likely he’da had to be beat plumb to death afore a body got any use outen him, anyhow.” Stuart grinned again. “Three hundred dollars apiece, mebbe more, them two younkers oughta bring me, oncet I gits ’em to Fanduhsburk, mebbe twicet thet if I decides to take ’em plumb to Looeezfilburk. Hell, mebbe I’ll do ‘er, been coon’s years sincet I’z in Looeezfilburk, an’ I’ll have me the gal to play with till we gets there, too. ‘Course, she’s gotta be gentled down some…” He had been the first to take the girl, and the little minx had fought him like a scalded treecat—pummeling, punching, kicking and clawing until his arm wound had started to bleed again, not to mention tooth-tearing his bristly chin and very nearly biting his right ear off; which last injuries. she had wrought on him after he had had her wrists and ankles securely tied to the wagon sides, nor was he the only man she had savagely marked. That he had successfully resisted the impulse to give her back as good or better with his big, bony fists and strictly forbidden any of the others with whom he shared the use of her to strike her face had been based upon a good, sound principle of business—broken noses and knocked-out teeth lowered the value of female slaves.
He had not, of course, expected her to be a virgin, nor had she been; no nomad girl ever was so for any length of time after attaining puberty. “But,” he mused and again grinned to himself, “they says them there slave doctors in Fanduhsburk could make a virgin outen a thirty-year-old whore. Mebbe I oughta git ’em to make this gal inta one? Hmm, I’ll think on it. She’d sure bring more thet way, eastern buyers likin’ virgins the way they does.” He returned to his mental calculations for another few moments, then Bailee was shoving the girl to a place beside him at the rail, and he lost his train of thought. A glance downward gave him a glimpse only of the top of her head of dull, matted, dirty, dark-blond hair, for like all her people she was small, barely as high as his armpit The girl’s baggy trousers and full-sleeved shirt were both Somewhat the worse for having been violently removed from her body on several occasions, as well as being filthy from having been lived in and slept in for the weeks since her capture. Her short boots of red felt and brown leather had survived in better condition, since she had been carefully locked out of sight in one of the big wagons for most of the journey.
She stood at the rail for some minutes, then shyly edged closer, closer, until her slender body was in contact with Stuart’s. Her grubby, broken-nailed, but slim and graceful right hand hesitantly extended to touch, then gently massage his genitals through the stuff of his clothing. Stuart grinned. “Cain’t git enough of me, can you, baby dolir Without turning his head, he said, “Bailee, you can jest go on back, ‘bout your work. Me an’ this here little gal’s got us some palav’rin’ to do up here.”
The trader closed his eyes in ecstasy as the captive girl rubbed and kneaded and caressed his flesh, and he was completely unaware of her other hand’s activities, not even feeling the easing of the silver-hilted knife from out its sheath in the top of his right boot.
When he did feel the girl’s body begin to crouch lower, he began to turn to face her… and a white-hot agony lanced in behind his right knee! Even as he suddenly realized that the right leg no longer would support him, the girl—still firmly clutching his scrotum in her wiry grip—launched herself forward, over the rail. Stuart, screaming his agony and terror, was dragged over and down and into the muddy brown water of the Great River.
2
The shock of striking the water and its coldness stunned Stehfahnah for but a moment. She let go of the man and put the blade of the knife between her small white teeth in order to free both hands for swimming. Surfacing, she shook the water from her eyes and breathed deeply, treading water and moving her arms to keep her body erect in the water.
Gasping and coughing up water, her sometime captor was floundering about a few yards distant, just beyond the rhythmic file of splashing oars, which meant some eighteen feet from the side of the barge, the upper rail of which was now lined with men, all shouting and pointing.
Taking another deep gulp of air, Stehfahnah swam purposefully in the trader’s direction. Once close behind him, she grabbed the back of his wide weapons belt, jerked loose his big dirk and its sheath, then shoved him deliberately into the path of the heavy oars.
Stuart did not even have time to scream before the hardwood blade of one of the sweeps, driven by the strength of four brawny slave rowers, smashed into him. He sank for a long moment, then bobbed up, to float, face-down, with the current. By the time Several of the bargemen and wagoners had swum out, attached a rope to their leader and managed to hoist his limp, battered, broken and bleeding hulk back onto the barge, the girl was nowhere in view. Remembering the shrewdly cast dart that had pierced and slain her elder half brother, Broh, on the dark day she and her younger brothers were drugged and made captive by the treacherous traders, Stehfahnah swam underwater until she was beneath the flat bottom of the second barge, fifty yards behind the first. As the lead barge had halted, the barges behind had had no choice but to follow suit, but the column could not remain immobile for long, else the insistent tugging of the river’s current at their bulks would place undue pressure upon the transriverine cable.
Stehfahnah, too, was menaced by the current. She clawed at the rough, slimy boards, hearing just a few inches above her the clashings and danglings of the chains that held the oar slaves to their benches. At last she found a hold that would allow her to extend her head slightly and break surface at the waterline to take air while she did what she must do.
Her lungs once more filled afresh, she sent out a telepathic beam—a type of communication that her people called “mindspeak,” fairly common in those of her blood, but rather rare among these alien folk. She did not really know if one or both of her younger brothers were aboard this barge, but she could hope… “Djoh, Bahb!”
“Stehfahnah?”
“Yes,” she affirmed. “I have escaped. I jumped off the water wagon. I think I slew the swine, Stooahrt, so a small part of our clan’s vengeance has been taken, perhaps. I am under your water wagon, but there is no way I can free you, as well; you must find a time and a place to accomplish that for yourselves.” Twelve-year-old Bahb’s acceptance of the situation was beamed clearly, but the younger boy, Djoh, asked silently, “But sister, there are so many of them and they are all so big and strong. What if we cannot get away?” “Then you must go to Wind, little brother,” Stehfahnah replied. “You must get or make a weapon and force them to slay you… but, for the honor of our clan, you must try to take at least one of the pigs with you. Be not overhasty, though, in aught you do. Depend upon Bahb’s judgment—he has the mind of a full-grown warrior, for all that he has seen but twelve summers.” The barge had commenced to move forward, the heavy oars rising and falling rhythmically to the resounding strokes of a mallet on a hollow board. Stehfahnah took one last, deep gulp of air, then let go her hold and began to swim with the current, angling toward the western bank of the river.